Shape the Future: Generous Leadership with Simple Modern CEO Mike Beckham

In Episode 5 of the All of Life Podcast, we sit down with Mike Beckham, co-founder and CEO of Simple Modern, to explore the transformative power of generous leadership. Hosted by Niccole Hall, this conversation dives into how a mindset centered on generosity can redefine success in both business and ministry.

Mike shares his personal journey—from his early days in ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ to leading a thriving, mission-driven company that values giving as much as growth. Discover how his experiences have shaped his approach to leadership, turning challenges into opportunities to inspire and empower others.

In this episode, you'll learn how:

• Embracing "generosity with a capital G" can transform not only your organization but also your community.

• Integrating generous leadership into company culture fosters innovation, excellence, and deeper connections.

• Simple Modern’s unique approach blends entrepreneurial success with a passion for giving, setting a new standard for faith-based leadership.

• Practical strategies can help you lead with purpose—balancing ambition with the joy of making a meaningful impact.

Perfect for ministry leaders, entrepreneurs, and anyone passionate about infusing their leadership style with generosity, Mike’s insights offer a fresh perspective on how giving—whether through time, talent, or resources—can pave the way for lasting change. His real-world examples and actionable advice provide a roadmap for cultivating a culture where every act of generosity not only uplifts individuals but also shapes the future of Christian leadership.

Join us as we unpack the core principles behind generous leadership, explore the synergy between faith and business, and highlight the powerful impact of living a life centered on giving. This episode is a must-listen for those eager to lead with both heart and purpose, and for supporters of Oklahoma Baptist University’s Shape the Future campaign.

Tune in now to discover how you can shape the future through generous leadership—transforming lives, inspiring communities, and leaving a lasting legacy of impact.

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Transcript

Niccole Hall: Welcome to the All of Life Podcast, where we explore how Oklahoma Baptist University is shaping the future. I'm your host, Nicole Hall. Join us monthly as we delve into OBU’s mission to provide Christian education across all fields, impacting students' lives for generations to come. Remember, it's all of life, all for Jesus.

Welcome to the All of Life podcast. I'm Nicole Hall, and today we're diving into a topic that when embraced will shape not just lives, but hearts in entire communities as we strive to live all of life, all for Jesus through generosity. In this episode, we'll explore the transformational power of generosity, especially in the context of supporting faith-based institutions like Oklahoma Baptist University.

We'll discuss how generosity impacts individuals, organizations, and the kingdom of God. I am thrilled to welcome today's guest, Mike Beckham, and let me tell you a little about Mike. Mike is the co-founder and CEO of Simple Modern, a leading producer of premium drinkware and lifestyle products. Since its founding in 2015, Simple Modern, based right here in Oklahoma, has grown into a nine figure business, donating at least 10% of its profits to nonprofit organizations.

Before Simple Modern Mike spent over a decade serving with CRU, also known as Campus Crusade for Christ gaining invaluable experience in ministry and the nonprofit world. He later transitioned to entrepreneurship, founding businesses that have collectively generated over $1 billion in revenue. Mike also hosts the Scaling for Good podcast, which I know is fantastic.

Mike lives in Norman with his wife of 17 years, Heather, and he has two children, Carter and Kenzie. Today we'll explore Mike's journey, the mission of generosity at Simple Modern, and how we can play a crucial role in shaping the future of OBU and beyond through living generously. So Mike, welcome to the show.

Thanks. So happy to have you here. Your journey, obviously from ministry to leading one of the most successful companies in your industry, is really fascinating. Let's start by talking about your background and really the role that generosity played in your life early on. Can you share maybe a little about your faith and experiences with CRU and how those maybe shaped your perspective on generosity. 

Mike Beckham: Yeah. A couple stories that I think will help people to understand my journey to this point. One is I grew up in a family where both my parents were in the mental health profession, which in Oklahoma is not necessarily a profession that gets super prioritized a lot of the time.

And, there was not a lot of funding often for it and when we would talk about their work, one of the things that they communicated really clearly, it's interesting of all the things you hear your parents say growing up, there's a few that for whatever reason, stick. And one of the things that, that they said that really stuck with me was that they wanted to devote their careers to helping people more than making money.

So an easy way to translate it is in our family, the way that success was defined for me growing up by the example of my parents was that success was measured by not the size of your bank account, but by how much you impacted and helped the lives of other people, which I think is really a gift that my parents gave me.

Even though we grew up kind of around church, my coming to faith experience happened in college. I was at OU getting my undergrad over a five year period. And if you cut that into two, almost equal halves right down the middle, that's about when I became a Christian. So I actually experienced college in two kind of radically different ways.

But when I became a Christian, it, I would say, radically altered my view of my life, what I wanted to do with my career. I would say it kind of turned almost everything in my life upside down. So met my wife at the end of the second two and a half years of college. I tell people it's good I met her after becoming a Christian. She would not have been very interested in me before based on who she is and her character. 

But I was majoring in finance and I really thought that was going to be the expression that God would call me to of how to use my career. My wife had one additional year of school after we got married.

She was getting a master's and so we had kind of a gap year where we needed to do something with. There weren't like a lot of finance jobs in the Oklahoma City area that were really compelling to me. Through a series of events, I got asked if I would do a one year internship with this full-time ministry, a position with CRU, which is something I'd gotten involved in as a student.

To this day, I couldn't totally walk you through the thought process that led to me saying yes, but I said yes to it. And part of what came with that, CRU is on a support raising model, which means that your salary is basically raised personally. There's not a central fundraising person or committee that does that.

You have to go and raise your own salary and I did not have like a huge faith-based community that I could fundraise from. I really struggled. I raised $17,000 in salary my first year and I really struggled to do it and going through that process was my first time to be really on the receiving end and the need end of giving, and I think God used that pretty powerfully in my life.

So one of the analogies I'll use is, it's funny, we've got a puppy. You and I were just talking about it before the podcast. We've got a puppy right now. And the, the research says that puppies very early on, they have this ?????imprinting period of their life where what happens during that period is just really disproportionately important to them.

You have a really bad experience with a storm, for example, then thunder and lightning are gonna spook that puppy even when it's a 10-year-old dog. Well, in a, in a much more kind of virtuous way, my wife and I’s early years of our marriage, I think was an imprinting phase in our life where we were really solidifying, ‘Hey, what is the dream of our life?’

What do we want our marriage to be about? And being in a situation where I was raising financial support and I was on the receiving end of giving, I think heavily shaped my views towards generosity and towards giving in general. Obviously, over the course of my career, things have changed pretty radically, and so now I find myself on a very different side of the table.

But what happened in my early 20s and the worldview and the values that my wife and I developed during that period, I think are still in place. And that's the reason why we think very differently about how to use the financial resources that have come with the company. But we also think about it as much more holistic than just what we do with our money.

We think generosity has just kind of become a theme of our lives. And that's played out in everything that I've done in my career. 

Niccole Hall: Clearly your faith. I mean, I think Christians would agree that our faith is a reflection of what we do in our life. I mean if we truly believe what we believe, then we're going to do what drives that.

And so faith, of course, in Christ drives generosity as well. Do you feel like, you just said those early years really impacted your drive to live like that, but do you feel like it's also giving you just a different perspective on the future and the Kingdom of God and how you can more generously be a part of that plan.

Mike Beckham: Yeah well, so one of the things that I mentioned in my story is the idea that being on the receiving end has transformed the way that I think about being on the giving end. But if you're a Christian, then actually you realize that the entire frame for generosity is that we give because we have first been on the receiving end.

John says it this way, we love because he first loved us, that there's actually a chronology that goes on in the Christian life and that chronology starts with when we deserve nothing, when we're in need, that God is abundantly generous with us, that God gives to us. And that the transformative nature of receiving that, especially when we don't deserve it, leaves this mark on us that the worst parts of us want to repay it, want to do something to kind of settle accounts and scripture is really clear.

It's not the point, but the right response really clearly is that our hearts would be driven to do the same thing that God did for us to other people. One of the ways that we show our appreciation, one of the ways that we reflect God's character of the world, is that we treat other people the way that God first treated us.

And so I think that's the gospel narrative, God is ridiculously generous with us. And that us receiving that, us understanding that, becomes the foundation for us to be that kind of generous with others. It's not really based on us at all. It's based on something that we've experienced where God went first and through experiencing his character and his generosity, it actually makes us capable of generosity that we would not be capable of any other way on our own.

Niccole Hall: Correct. So ok, the Lord is obviously at work cultivating this desire to live generously. And then you co-found Simple Modern. Yeah, I know there's a lot in between there. But obviously this mission of generosity is pretty counter-cultural in our world with a for-profit business. 

Mike Beckham: Yeah. 

Niccole Hall: And you don't see very many people starting at businesses to give it all away. 

Mike Beckham: Yeah. 

Niccole Hall: And to me that is just really impactful and amazing. So how do you believe your mission transformed your company's culture and how did you even go about it. I mean was the person you founded Simple Modern with obviously on the same page. Like tell us a little bit about what went into founding a for-profit business, but with that as your mission.

Mike Beckham: So the business was co-founded with two other people that I had known for more than a decade. They are both believers in Christ, and shared, really, I think my passion for generosity. So one of the unique fingerprints of Simple Modern is that we started the company with a picture of what we wanted the company to be about from a mission purpose before we even knew what products we would sell, how we would fund it, and that was really motivating for me.

I think part of it was after spending a period of my career in the nonprofit world and a period of my career in the for-profit world, maybe not everybody is wired this way. I think most people are, but for me in particular, I was not going to be able to be motivated by working a job simply to produce more money.

I've got a skillset where I can do that, but that is not motivating. I needed to have some sense of how the hours that I put in and the effort I put in, were making an impact bigger than making, you know, the bottom line go up. And my co-founders, I think, were very similarly motivated. We wanted to create excellent culture and we wanted to have a mission that was compelling, that really transcended just making money.

And then the other stuff came later. So, in a very real sense, from the very beginning, Simple Modern has been built on this core idea of generosity. I think the eloquence that we speak about it with and the words that we use, like our mission statement, we exist to give generously. That came later, you know, like we did not have all of that figured out, and I could not have articulated any of these principles at the level that I can today when we first started the company.

But I think at least in spirit and in intention, we had this idea. One of the ways that that's really mattered organizationally is that it's helped us to have a clear north star, a center of gravity almost, of who we want to add to the team and how we want to build the team. We were looking for people who would be motivated by the idea of using the skills that they have in the business world but knowing that their excellence through business was not just going to be providing for their family and providing a paycheck, but also that it would be translating into impacting people's lives in a number of really positive ways through our giving and through the different nonprofits that we work with. It's interesting, this morning I came from something at our company and we're moving into a period of allocating our giving for the 2024 calendar year.

We got to hear from two of our nonprofits, Hope is Alive and Positive Tomorrows, that we work with pretty closely. And it was fun looking around the room at my coworker's faces as they were hearing from these organizations. And people are just beaming and it's really easy to understand why, because so much of what we do with our jobs is mundane.

You know, like no matter what job you have, I mean, I'm a CEO and I do a bunch of mundane, not fun stuff. And I know that I have a quote unquote glamorous job. There are many jobs where there is just so much of it just feels monotonous and what we're all looking for is that there is something, a meaning and purpose that's coming out of it.

And effective leadership, I think, is helping people to see how the work that they're doing matters in some way, in in some way that transcends just getting to Friday and the next paycheck. And we've been really intentional about that with the company. So we've built a culture around people who were passionate about using their skills to impact the lives of other people.

And, as a result, we've had a really strong sense of identity and culture. And really as the organization's grown, what I have seen is that that has strengthened and deepened instead of weakened. And usually as organizations get bigger, the sense of mission and purpose kind of gets diluted down because the organization hires for competency and they think about what does this job need to do?

And that's really the only thing that matters. We've had more of, I'd say, a three-pronged approach of what do we need this person to do? What is the culture that we're trying to build and how do they fit into it, and how passionate and engaged are they in the mission of who we are? And we're looking for people that really fit all three.

And, and so. When you do take that approach, it can go the other way. Culture gets stronger as you add more people, and I think that's where the organization is today. I think we're at 115 or 120 people and we probably have the strongest sense of identity we've ever had. 

Niccole Hall: It's so exciting.

I've been in your building and I know as you know, walk into that main area where the majority of your employees are. I mean it's plastered up there on the wall, right? We exist to give generously. And I do feel like that is very powerful. I mean, I can imagine coming in every day seeing that up there and then remembering like, okay, yeah, this is why I'm here, whatever that might look like.

So I would like to talk a little, I'd love for you to share a story or an example of, you know, how Simple Modern, specifically maybe, has impacted an employee. Like, do you have employees come to you and say, ‘This has really changed my life. Working here and having this mission.’ And maybe also a story about impact outside of Simple Modern.

Yeah. An example of maybe a nonprofit you support. I’d love to have a couple of those. 

Mike Beckham: Well, I think this is a good opportunity to make a pretty important point, which is that when we hear the word generosity, we tend to almost exclusively think about it in terms of monetary, financial generosity.

And that is certainly a part of generosity, but the way that we've come to define it at the company is we think about generosity with a capital G instead of a little G. And what I mean by that is the idea that you have the capacity and the opportunity to be generous with many things in your life and money is just one of those dimensions.

You can be generous with your time, you can be generous with your words, you can be generous with your skills and your knowledge. And the list goes on. What I'm constantly challenging the company to do is to answer the question, how are you individually leading in generosity with the way that you're situated?

So I, I think from the company's perspective, some ways that we've helped people internally, I. We have done things monetarily at times. Like we try to, we we're an esop, which means everybody in the company owns a piece of the company. We just announced we're, we're reimbursing up to $6,000 in childcare costs a year.

Things like that that you don't have to do, but you're doing them as an act of generosity. And also to, you know, to encourage young families and to create capacity for them to do things. But interestingly, I think some of the biggest ways that we're generous with our team is actually in the ways that we help them to develop.

One example this is, is simple. This doesn't have to do with money, but it has to do with expectations. When we hire somebody new to the company, we will go through, the mission, vision, values. I have a one-on-one with them where I walk through the mission, vision values, and one of our values is excellence.

And there's several bullet points that I talk through with them, but one of the bullet points says. That part of your job is to be excellent relationally, both inside the company and out. And I unpack that to say that there's a lot of companies that would say, Hey, just do your work. We don't care how you get along with your coworkers.

That's not us. There's some companies that would say, we really care about how you get along with your coworkers. We don't care about your personal life. That's not us either. We actually, part of doing well in this job is that you are going to be excellent in your relationships inside of work and outside as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as a son or daughter.

And we are going to structure the work and the responsibility you have so that you can be excellent in that. So this is an example of generosity that is not directly monetary, but deeply impacts people's quality of life. Another example that's really straightforward. Is that I'm trying to create a culture where we are very transparent and where I'm constantly walking through with the larger company, here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it.

Here's a strategy and thought process behind it. Because I view one of the biggest gifts we can give to them is helping them to develop and the way that they think. And that's gonna be invaluable to them as they go into their career. So, so that's one example. We're thinking across all these. I mean, another one, you mentioned this, coming to the building, I get this feedback all the time.

The way that people inside of our organization are generous with their words is really remarkable. It is a space that you leave feeling more encouraged and connected than you did when you walked in. And I think that's, that's a reflection of generosity. I mean, we've even done things like, helped people that were going through IVF and wanted to conceive and, and, you know, the cost can be really high.

So there's, there's a number of different things we've done externally. It's the same idea. It's, yes, we give to nonprofits. We, we try to give product away just about any time somebody asks. But I also get asked to speak a lot. And there's a lot of mentoring, aspiring entrepreneurs. A good example is that I have knowledge and experience that I've been privileged to be able to have in leading companies and being generous with that, helping teach other aspiring entrepreneurs giving that knowledge away.

That's a great example of how we can be generous externally. And it's not just me. This is true for many of the leaders inside of the company. So we're not just asking how do we be generous to the people that have built the company and are working at the company. We're also asking how can we be generous to the surrounding community to our customers.

And then we're asking how do we do that in more ways than just money? And I think that a point that's really worth driving home here is that. Money is a tool that sometimes can be used effectively to produce results depending on the results you're trying to produce, and oftentimes is ineffective in producing results, but it's only a tool, and if you start to see money as a thing that can produce positive change in and of itself, you're going to be disappointed.

So even when we give to nonprofits, it still takes finding passionate individuals that are giving their lives towards a cause and their passion and their weakens and their nights and their emotional capacity and providing them funding. So generosity with money can be transformative, but only into, in as much.

As you're able to use that tool in an effective way, and interestingly, many of the other forms of generosity, it's a lot easier to make a connection between giving them and positive impact. I'll say this again, your words cost you nothing other than time and intentionality. Yet in each of our lives, if we think about things that have transformed and changed the trajectory of our lives, often it is something that someone has said to us.

So I, I would encourage anybody listening to this, that no matter how God has you situated, there is an opportunity for you to be generous for the benefit of other people. And sometimes that'll include money, but it's much more holistic and encompassing than that. And once you take that perspective, I.

You're going to realize that God is putting many opportunities in your path to express generosity on a daily basis. 

Niccole Hall: It's so true. So we we're in, we kicked off a campaign for our university and it, it's, our motto is Shape the future. Yeah we love this motto because it is kind of like we're replicating immuno.

We, you can shape the university. The university has faculty and staff that are shaping students, and then hopefully those students are going to go into the world. Mm-hmm. And shape the world for Christ. And so that's something that we're passionate about and of course why we went for this motto for our campaign.

But because we're in this campaign, of course we are trying to fundraise because we need and want quality students to come here to be impacted by people like you and others who are willing to pour into them, and then to go out into the world and make a difference. We want tons of Mike Beckhams to come from Oklahoma Baptist University.

So in regard to just kind of like a higher education conversation, I know you teach students. Mm-hmm. how do you, is there, is there something or some way that you specifically pour into students? I mean, is there something you would advise OBU to do in regard to that, in regard to putting forward that theme of generosity?

Mike Beckham: Well, I think that. A bedrock of I, I guess I'll start at a even a little bit higher level and I'll get to that. In saying that, the reason why education is so powerful is because it's really difficult to measure the impact of how knowledge not only transforms a person, but it transforms everything that comes after one of my favorite quotes that I'll use from time to time is that you can count the number of seeds in an apple. You can't count the number of apples in a seed. You can count the number of concepts that a person maybe learns while they're a student, but it's really difficult to count the ways that they will then take those concepts and impact the lives of other people and teach other people and how those people will then in turn take those things.

It's one of the really interesting and powerful things about human is humans, is that as we acquire knowledge, as we. Become more enlightened, the way that we interact with other people. The way that that knowledge ripples out, it often is in very unpredictable ways that God uses that to transform and improve the world.

This is just part of God's kind of common grace, but I think that with college students, we should be building into them a sense of stewardship and a sense of responsibility. One of the things that I will do, as you mentioned, is I'll speak to college students sometimes. I, I teach entrepreneurship.

Recently, I, I talked to a group of students at a Christian conference about money and I, I said, here are kind of nine points that I've learned along the last 20 years of being out of college that I think can be helpful. And the very first point was, you are rich. The way that we try to act is that rich is out there.

It's somebody other than me. But it's, it's not true. It, it's not true as a believer because, you know, scripture tells us you're like beyond rich, you know, just in terms of what you have in a non-monetary sense. But if you're an American student. Then you are rich in some very tangible and obvious ways, like you are rich in opportunity, like 1% of the world or 2% of the world gets to go to college and you're in college, so you're already in the one or 2%.

If you look at the economic situation you're in, you're already in the top, you know, two, three, 4% of the world economically. If you look at the giftings you've been given by God, you're obviously in one of those top 10 per top decile type groups in terms of the intellectual capacity and gifts you've been given.

And so the, I think one of the things that is really important and powerful that we communicate is. That you've been entrusted with a lot and that you, and that with that comes both tremendous opportunity and great responsibility. That this is another one of the things that you'll probably hear me say if you ever hear me speak.

I usually use this line because I, I think it does encompass as a believer what the conviction that I've come to, which is that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to use the giftings that we have to impact the world. Especially as believers, and that that should be part of our message to college students, that we should be helping them to understand that they, they do have an opportunity to be successful.

We want to help them to be successful, but not just for themselves. And that with that success will come the responsibility to impact the next generation, that responsibility to their communities, that responsibility to the global church. And so I think that that's probably been the concept that's been the most transformative to me.

I think in the most kind of prish, religious environments, it's all law and it's all responsibility. What you should do and the way that you should, what you have to do for God. That's not the gospel. And I think in most communities that fall off on the licentiousness side, it's all about the freedom of the gospel and that that misses the mark also, that there really, there's this healthy balance between the immense freedom that we have in our calling as Christians and the grace that exists.

And that simultaneously the intentionality and the deliberateness and the responsibility that God entrusts us with one. One of my favorite ways of thinking about it is that when it comes to the responsibility that God has given us, it's not that we have to, it's that we get to. And that matters a lot.

If you view the things that God has called us to through scripture as a list of rules or a list of requirements, that is very demotivating and it's very oppressive. But if instead you think of it as things that are of great importance that he has deemed you in particular worthy of. You know, we all want our lives to matter basically.

The worst thing God could say to us is, here, keep all these rules, but none of it's gonna matter, right? None of your effort, none of your time, none of your thinking, none of your planning, none of it matters. And he does the exact opposite. He calls us into things that are really honestly above our pay grade, the impacting of the souls of men and women, things that have eternal ramifications.

The idea that God would choose to involve us in these things is, is mind blowing. And that when we realize that, that he involves us, not because he needs us, because he definitely doesn't need us and we probably, he probably do a much better job of it exactly without us, but that he chooses to involve us because he is giving us the gift of being involved in the things that he cares about, and he's giving us the gift of having purpose and meaning that that's a framing That's very exciting.

And so like this is probably what I would say I try to do with the speaking that, that I'm a part of and I would encourage any Christian college to be a part of is. Yes, let's give them a totally biblical worldview, but then let's impress upon them what a joy it is and what an honor it is that we get to be a part of what God's called us to.

And, and not to just feel the responsibility piece and also to not be told what's being, you know, we're in a postmodern culture where it's like, Hey, it's all up to you. You know? Right. There's, there's no truth. There's no specific thing like. As a believer. I know, I know for a fact there's things that God calls me to scripture's really clear about that.

So I, I think it's been finding that balance that's helped me to thrive and it's one of the reasons why the things that I've talked about have, have resonated. 

Niccole Hall: So, I mean, throughout scripture we see this concept of we've been blessed. God's people are blessed to be a blessing. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear we're blessed to be a light to the nations.

We're blessed to bless those around us. I mean, that's exactly. What you're talking about. Are there some tangible ways that you go about kind of discerning how God wants you to give? 

Mike Beckham: Yeah, so the, the first thing I would say is I have an agreement with God that is very simple and it is. I don't feel like you kind of directly speak to me all that often, but if you tell me to do something, I will just do it.

I'll just do it, you know, like, I'm going to make sure that I'm actually like that, that it's not like I ate a bad burrito for lunch or something, you know? But like, right. If I feel a conviction and, and I've had situations like that, Hey, I want you to write a check for this amount and give it to that person.

You know, I'm making you aware of that need and I want you to answer it. And I've developed over the years the muscle of saying yes. I think this is one of the misnomers about generosity is that generosity is exactly like a muscle. That the reason why scripture says that when you're faithful with little, you're entrusted with much and you can be faithful with much.

It's because the why we want to tell ourselves is that I will get serious about this when, and, and we push it to a future date. And the reality is, no you won't. No, you won't. If you're not building the muscle today, you will never be able to bear the weight of tomorrow, and you will never be able to put more pressure on that muscle in the future.

And so one of the most concrete, tangible things I did, I graduated from college, I was making less than $20,000 a year, and I tried to buy every meal I possibly could for people, and it was painful, you know, $5, $10 at a time. And it was painful every time I did it, but every time I did it was a little bit like doing a curl or a rep on on the bench press because it made that muscle a little bit stronger.

And every time I felt like God told me, I want you to do this thing, I would just do it. And so that's part of it. There's like a base layer here, which is as a Christian, what we're called to is faithfulness. And so what that means is if God calls you to something you are willing to say yes. Now what we know is normative, or at least for me, I think for most people, is that you're not hearing from God directly audibly very often.

And so then it's about wisdom and saying, okay, I'm gonna use principles from scripture. I'm gonna use godly counsel and I'm going to, I'm gonna use historical precedent. And those are things that are gonna help me to kind of build a system. So, we have some really concrete ones in our family in terms of.

How we give to the local church, which I'm an elder in, in, in our local church, and we're obviously really involved there. How do we give to missionaries, especially like parachurch missionaries like that. We were that. So like, and you know what, we've had to have principles because if, if you have a lot of friends that are missionaries and you say, Hey, we, we want to give to missionaries, they will ask, you know, there you will get a lot of requests.

And so you have to have organizing principles about how you do all those things. But then, like I mentioned earlier, we also have a lot of principles about how we're also going to give time. So I am still intentional about discipling  men even now when I have less time than ever before. Primarily because it's painful, primarily because it's a lot easier for me to give money than it is for me to give time.

And this has been the other thing that God's really impressed upon me. Is that it would be a miss for me to start to say, well, I have a system and a methodology for giving finances. And because I've done that, I've kind of checked the box of generosity. And so in interestingly, the systems that have been the, the most painful, the generosity that's been the most painful in in recent years, the most sacrificial, I think is probably the right word, have been the ones that are non-monetary, where it does involve time and, and emotional capacity.

So we try and think about it holistically. And you know, I think the other thing that I would say here is that, it’s a really simple principle. It's a great litmus test. It's a very, it's a very uncomfortable litmus test, and it works really well in many areas of the Christian life. I'll give an analogy.

When I was in, in college ministry, there were two kind of camps of men that I would have when it came to how they were thinking about women and how they were thinking about marriage. There was the group of men that was always trying to tell me, I think I'm ready. I'm ready to be a husband. I'm ready. And almost always, they were not ready.

You know? They were always trying to convince me that they were not ready, and then there were the men that were saying, you know, gosh, leading, leading a family, that's a really big thing. Loving someone sacrificially, that's huge. I don't think I'm mature enough. And it's like, no, you're ready. The fact that you understand that shows that you're ready in a similar way with generosity.

I think if you find yourself asking the question, what's the line? How much do I need to give? Then you're unhealthy probably and that what generosity looks like when it's actually being expressed, I think in a Christian way in our life is how much generosity am I capable of? Because God's generosity was basically ultimate.

It was complete. And it isn't this kind of exacting like, okay, I am gonna give you exactly 10% 

Niccole Hall: this amount, right? 

Mike Beckham: Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, I'm gonna give you the most valuable thing I have. And and so when the gospel really is resonating in our lives. That's the way that we're gonna think. It's not going to be how much do I have to give to kind of check the box that God's asked me to check?

But instead it becomes, you know, how far can this go? What, how generous can I be? How much can I walk in the example that, that Jesus has laid for me? And so you're pushing yourself to see what's possible and not, to try and get to, you know, the, the standard that you feel like checks the box right.

Niccole Hall: So Dr. Thomas, our president, always talks about, you know, we're in the people business. Yeah. I personally love that because I work on an advancement team. So I primarily am raising funds and asking for gifts for the university. But what's been so awesome is I have noticed and just seen faithful people who've prayed.

They've fasted and they've known like the Lord wants me to give to this scholarship. Like I want to help this student who now is. You know, a doctor or whatever. Yeah. So it's been very rewarding to see that we are, you know, in this campaign we're asking not just alumni, donors and friends, but we're actually asking, you know, staff and faculty and people who are pouring into the students all the time, honestly don't have huge salaries.

But we're asking them to do a lot of what you're saying, not just giving of their  gifts, but of their resources. So, what have you experienced as far as just blessing? I mean, we know that, I think we downplay what kind of blessings there are for the givers.

Is there something specific that you've just been like, wow. I mean, I gave to this and it was hard, but the Lord, you know, he's gonna use it. Yeah. And that's so rewarding. 

Mike Beckham: Well, I think I'll say a couple of counterintuitive things. The, the prosperity Gospel, it has a fundamental misunderstanding of our nature as men and women, as souls. That I think leads to just a really bizarre kind of interpretation of what it would look like for God to bless us, where it has this very carnal view that the way that God would bless us, the primary way that he would bless us, is that he would give us more things. And interestingly, I think one of the most powerful things that's happened in my life is I've become less attached to things, that don't reside in my heart, they don't own me, and they have less of my heart.

And that that actually is. The place you want to be, that's the most freeing place. So it's an interesting way to like, think about blessing. It's like, well blessing is the thing that, that God gives you in some ways, like freedom to not be captive, to kind of  the different games that that society and the world plays and the different ways that my heart can lead me astray. That like the ultimate freedom and it's the ultimate blessing. So interestingly, like through generosity, one of the biggest things that God's done through it is that my heart is just not in love with money. And that is actually a great gift. And another thing that is a close corollary of that is that.

I think when people listen to me, I think it would be easy to say, well, yeah, you know you have a ton of money. So, it's easy to think that way and, you know, I would love to have that problem. But I think most people live their lives under an illusion that if they just had more stuff, if they just had more money, that that really would fill the gap that they're feeling.

They're able to live their entire lives with that delusion. And it's actually been quite a gift for me to get all the way to the end of that track to see it fully for the delusion it is, and to move on. And I know that many people don't ever get there, you know? And so that's one of the reasons why I love talking about generosity is I would love it if part of what I'm able to do is say, Hey guys, I went all the way down to the end of the track and here's what's there.

You don't have to do that. You can like actually lay down that idea right now and move on with living your life because it isn't there. I think that in some ways this is very much, you know, money has, als always captivated the hearts of men and women, but especially in America where a particularly, materialistic and individualistic society, it's, it's particularly dangerous.

And so, like, it's, it's really been freeing for me. That I do feel like if, you know, all my money went away tomorrow that I wouldn't feel anything about that because there's not an emotional attachment to it. So that's been a gift. It is truly a gift when you feel like you've been a part of something that has enduring meaning.

Mm-hmm. And, as we mentioned, there's so many. I mean, like, if you just, if you actually documented the minutes of your life. I think the thing you would come away with it from that exercise is just how mundane it is. How many of 'em are just heating up something in the microwave or asleep or in the shower or you know, moving this from here to there and the, when you get to see parts of what you've done, actually transform someone else and make, create meaning and purpose that.

Is transcendent, like, I mean, the Bible tells us that the things that God cares about are the souls of men and women, and that within the universe, it's basically the only thing that has enduring meaning and value. And so the idea that we get to be a part of that, like is, is exceptionally motivating.

I think that I've, there've been a lot of different parts of generosity where I have seen the trajectory of someone's life and the trajectory of their spiritual condition change. Knowing that I played some role in that, especially because I had my life transformed as a college student. So I get especially emotional about that because it's very easy for me to think about the counterfactual of who I could have been if my life had not been transformed when I was in college.

And I think there's some versions of Mike that would be much less enjoyable to be around than, than the one that, that you get today. And so it gets me, it, it gets me very motivated when I feel like I get to be a part of something transformative in somebody's life that actually has enduring meaning.

Niccole Hall: Well, we're so thankful that you would join us today. I mean, obviously, we are asking our listeners to pray about giving to OBU because we do believe that. This university is impacting students mm-hmm. And impacting the world for Christ. And, we're just thankful that we were able to kind of hear and get feedback from you and just be challenged with living more generously and really reframing our mindset to be eternal.

Yeah. I think that's kind of the key. I mean, unless we have God's kingdom at heart and in mind, it's difficult, you know, to live. And we don't wanna live with the obligation to give, we wanna give. Do what he's asking us to do. And so I'm so thankful. I mean, it's, it's always a joy to hear you because it's powerful and you are a father of Christ who is pursuing what he has for you.

And so we're thankful for that. To our listeners today, generosity obviously doesn't just transform lives. It transforms hearts, it transforms communities, and we're all about advancing God's kingdom. By partnering with Oklahoma Baptist University, you're not just supporting a university, you're shaping the future of Christian leaders of people who are going into the world to also transform lives and communities, for God's glory. And so thank you for joining us today. Until next time, may your generosity reflect God's abundant love and His grace in your life. And thank you Mike for coming. 

Mike Beckham: Yeah, thank you having me. 

Niccole Hall: Thank you for joining us on the All of Live podcast.

Stay connected by following us on social media and subscribing on your favorite podcast platform. To support's Shape the Future campaign. Visit oku.edu/shape the future. Together we are future shapers. See you next time.