Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Russ Crossen. Russ is Chief Mission Officer and Senior Partner of the Blue Trust. Russ was hired in 1980 as the second employee of the Blue Trust. Prior to his current position, he was president and CEO. And from 99 to 2002, he was executive director of the National Christian Foundation. Russ is the author of several books, including Your Life Well Spent, The Truth About Money Lies, What Makes a Great, excuse me, what makes a leader great, your money made simple, and leverage. He's also been featured as a speaker in many venues. Graduated from Kansas State University with a BS in mathematics and a master's degree in education. And he and his wife Julie live in Roswell, Georgia. They have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and 10 grandchildren. And he is an avid pickleballer. And uh I, you know, I just went through Houston and one of I went through kind of our old neighborhood. They had turned uh a grocery store, I believe it was a it was Albertsons, they turned into a pickleball arena. Uh so pickleball is taking over. Uh Russ, welcome to the Christianity and business podcast. Excited to have you today.
SPEAKER_00Darren, thanks for having me. And yeah, pickleball has kind of taken over. I wish I would have figured out how to invest in it early on. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yep. It's uh it's a really great sport. Do you play doubles or just uh do you play doubles or singles?
SPEAKER_00Just double, just double. Singles is too hard. So double is right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. That's right. Stick with doubles, take care of your knees, take care of your back. Um, Russ, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, as you said, I started almost four and a half decades ago, and and um, you know, we have a very distinct mission for our company and realize that you know God had called us as a company to to effect a certain purpose and mission, and you realize that he has a lot to say about business, he has a lot to say about relationships, has a lot to say about how we interact with each other in business. And so, you know, as you start a business from scratch, you you kind of learn some of the biblical underpinnings that I think would be wise to gird uh any business. So kind of early on, we kind of built some some systems and processes around um incorporating biblical principles into our business.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you had mentioned that uh Doug Sherman's book, Your Work Matters to God, uh, made a uh made a profound impact on you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you you realize that the Bible has a lot to say about work. You know, it's a gift from God. We see that in Ecclesiastes, we're commanded to work, uh, we see that in Thessalonians and then uh in Genesis, work is good. And so you begin to, you know, that kind of changed my paradigm to realize that the Bible had a lot to say about work and how you actually do your work as unto him, Colossians 3.23. So, yes, that book back in the 80s was very meaningful, your work matters to God, and have just kind of been a proponent of really thinking correctly about biblical work since then. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Russ, what's one of your favorite stories that illustrates the impact being made by Blue Trust?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think um my favorite story is the prologue to the recent book that I co-authored with Ken Boa called Leverage. Um and and the story is uh, you know, we all have a choice when it comes to our money. We need to be wise with our money, 1 Timothy 6, which means you're generous, or you'd be like the farmer over in Luke 12 who just built bigger barns and was not rich towards God, and he was called a fool. So those are two four-letter words. We can be wise or a fool. My favorite story is a longtime client who passed away uh several years ago now. But at his funeral, it was standing room only, Darren, as people gave um testimony to the fact that his generosity had impacted their lives in a dramatic way. So he impacted a whole community in South Carolina with his generosity. And so that's probably the coolest story um uh that I can think of off the top of my head. And that's that's why it's a prologue to that book, because um he lived a life that really mattered, and um he he learned to be generous over the 35 years we worked together, and and it was just neat to see that evidenced at his funeral.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I heard a statement recently uh that we should live thinking about our eulogy, uh, not so much about our resume. Uh and it sounds like this gentleman did just that.
SPEAKER_00He did. You want to live with the end in mind, of course. And what we're really trying to help people do, Darren, is leverage the currency of that which is passing away into the currency of that which will last forever. And this gentleman did that as he learned to be generous. He was leveraging the currency of that which is passing away, the material possessions we accumulate into investing in people and um God's work around the world. So that's a choice we all have to make.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And what's one of the business practices that helps you and your company reflect God's character and ways?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think the first thing we did, and the most important thing, and I think any business needs to do this, um, if they're going to be a missionally driven business, is to have a clear mission statement. Um and so I think the first thing we did, you know, Blue Trust exists to help Christians free up resources for the Great Commission. That's our mission, has been since 1979. And and that's the that's the first step to to having God direct your businesses. What's the purpose of your business? Some people don't know this, but Chick-fil-A back in 1980, I've had the privilege of working with the Cathy family now for a quarter of a century, but they it was a tough time in 1980, interest rates were real high, and and um, and they went away, their leadership team, uh, for a retreat about what are they gonna do in this tough environment. And they came back with their corporate mission statement. And some people don't realize that you know that was probably the the bedrock to this to that company really having a solid foundation and taking off. But their their team was all wondering, or what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? Interest rates are high and you know, business is tough right now. And the leadership team said, Here's what we're gonna do. And they they articulated their mission statement, which is now in front of their corporate headquarters, and they've been after that now for 45 years, which is really cool. So I think any business needs to have a very clear mission statement, and that's the first step in having a biblically aligned and missional company.
SPEAKER_01Yes. To be faithful stewards of all that God has entrusted to us and to make a positive impact on everyone who comes in contact with Chick-fil-A. That's a bigger mission than just let's make great chicken sandwiches.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but what's interesting, Darren, is their whole staff was thinking they would come back from this retreat with, you know, some tactical, practical, business, you know, specific things they were going to do to quote, make it. And they came back with that mission statement. So thanks for reading that. But I just I think that just reinforces that that's where you start. Yeah, and the results are up to God. But you start with, okay, what's God want us to do with this business? Chick-fil-A did an eloquent job and a tremendous job of articulating that. And I think you could I think you could make a case, the rest is history for them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But in your company, Blue Trust, how do you how do you do this? You mentioned that you've got a uh that you've documented your covenantal culture and a book called The Difference, and that you train on it constantly. Um, what's what's kind of in that book and how do you train on that?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so very, very good question. So everything starts with our mission. So everybody that comes to our company is attracted to this, helping Christians free up resources to fill the Great Commission. But once they get here, we have to educate them on how do we operate as a company. And so we said we're going to be a covenantal company. Here's our covenant with one another, how we're going to treat each other. So, for example, if I'm in a meeting and I don't agree with the decision or what's going on, I don't, I don't hide in the weeds. I don't um, you know, bash people later around the water cooler, I don't murmur. Um, I have to share my input, but then I have to settle. It's not covenantal to you don't have to agree, but you can't leave the meeting and not settle. That's a practical illustration. Or for example, let's say I'm behind on my numbers for the year. If I don't advise my my boss of what we call an adverse trend that I'm not being covenantal. It's one thing to be behind, but it's it's it's not covenantal to not tell them as soon as I know I'm behind that I'm behind. And so we we we have documented this way of operating, how we operate in a book called The Difference. And so all new staff read the book, and then on our monthly meetings in our various offices, people are unpacking what some of these words mean. What's it mean to be emotionally hooked? What's it mean to be covenantal? What's it mean to settle? What's it mean to murmur? What's it mean to to um grow an influence? How do I grow an influence? And so um we've documented um what's you know, when I do a performance review, I'm being covenantal with the person because I'm helping them develop versus not talking to them. Um and so we've we've listed different ways that that covenantal behavior manifests itself, and then we continually remind our staff um that so for example, this if I'm in a meeting and I'm upset about something, I need to declare that I'm emotionally hooked and and state whatever my opinion is on that topic, but I've I I it's not it's not okay just to leave and be upset and go talk to my friend about it around the corner. And so these are the kind of things we we do role play, we do um case studies as we train our people on what do you do and what do you not do um in certain situations. And I probably it's a testimonial here. I we learned all these things that I used to do these things all wrong, okay? You know, and that the challenge we have is is you need to grow an influence, be a good follower, um don't think you're always right. Um the other thing we train our people on is that the area of decision making is always bigger than the area of knowledge. Leaders don't come in and say, I'm gonna make a bad decision today, but sometimes they aren't informed like they should be. It's those that are closest to the action that know better what should be done. That's why it's incumbent upon everybody in the organization to advance this great mission to figure out how to grow an influence so they can bring about better decision making. So, for example, if I'm close to a process and I know the process isn't working, my boss doesn't know that. So, how do I grow an influence to maybe change the process? Covenantly, I grow an influence and begin to share that. Uncovenantly, we'd be just complain about it, you know, talk to my friends about it, and and and undermine the company. So I think at the end of the day, we want the entity to go ahead, we want the mission to be accomplished, and to do that, everybody in the organization has to be looking to how to do things better and grow an influence to bring about change. And guess what? You have to be patient because sometimes your influence isn't where it needs to be to affect the change you want as soon as you want it. So you just keep producing, performing, growing in um your ability to articulate um and have you know EQ. Um and that's that's the that's what we expect from our people. Everybody making the entity better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, what happens if somebody um doesn't shine the light on an adverse trend or that they start murmuring? Or you know, what happens then? Have you experienced that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that just goes in the performance review. You know, you would call them out for not being covenantal. You'd remind them that this is not how the key thing here, Darren, this is how we do business. This is not what we do. I mean, we help people free up resources for the Great Commission, you know, and but how we do it is this way we're going to operate. And so obviously, if somebody doesn't do that, then that that becomes a performance review, and we expect them to um to remedy that. We also talk about freedom scale. We expect our employees to to to grow in their ability to do their job and and and and um get there one step ahead of their boss and and have more and more freedom, more autonomy. Everybody wants that. But if they're not doing the job and you hear your boss say they're nervous or anxious, those are two words that if they say that, I'm nervous, I'm anxious, then you ought to have your antenna go up as an employee and think, oh, wait a minute, I've got to change that perception. If they're nervous or anxious about whatever I'm doing or not doing, I've got to change that. And guess what? That's my responsibility. So we train people to kind of have their antenna up. We want all of our people to have as much freedom as possible. Everybody wants autonomy and freedom in their job, right? Well, you earn that by producing, by your character, and then and as you do that and your competence, uh you have a lot of freedom. But like in your case, what you just said is if somebody doesn't do something, I'm nervous that you're murmuring. It really makes me anxious when you don't tell me that you're behind your numbers. You just drop it on me at the end of the year. That's how we would talk to them. And then it's up to them to change that and make me not nervous as their boss or make me not anxious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, that's so good. And and I'm sure that has a a ripple effect throughout uh your team members' lives and their families. I mean, you're really helping them to um, whether they realize it or not, become disciples of Christ, to become disciples of of God's way of doing things, whether they would give glory to him or not is is kind of a separate separate issue. But you know, there's all these books on the Disney way and the Microsoft way and the HP way, but it sounds like what you're talking about really is the is the Jesus way. And as much as you're advancing the Great Commission beyond the company and helping your clients to uh to advance the Great Commission through their charitable giving, you're doing that day in, day out right there in the workplace.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're not a church, but I've had people tell us that we operate covenantally as a church and and and we should. We should be modeling Christ and our our day-to-day interactions. And like I said, we're not a perfect company by any means, but for 45 years we've attempted to be covenantal and take it very seriously because we have this great mission that God's entrusted to us. And so how we're gonna operate and interact with each other is critical as we move ahead. And as we move from two people when I started to 450 people today, you've got to keep this ever in front of your people.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Russ, what's the story of a time when you saw God's hand at work in your business?
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh, um, having been here since the start, um, there's been multiple times where, you know, you're early on, it was, hey, we're within a couple months of closing the doors because we need revenue um to um market market gyrations. You know, the most recent one with um in 2020 um with COVID and an incredible market decline. But you know, we saw God overcome that. We saw that back in um uh the Great Recession, you know, 2008. And so, you know, God has always had this business. Um, he's had his hand on it with you know um different, like that was probably maybe the biggest one, 2008, when there was an incredible market decline, but we just um hunkered down and and managed the business in a covenantal way. Those of us in leadership took the biggest pay cuts and and down to some people that didn't even take any pay cuts, we didn't let anybody go. We're able to weather the storm by just you know, everybody saying, Hey, we're about this bigger mission, we're just gonna hang in there, we're gonna do what it takes to to um stay in business and um weather the storm and and we were able to do that. So I think yeah, I've seen all those ups and downs, uh Darren, over the years, and um um it says be anxious for nothing in Philippians 4, 6 and 7. So you just uh cast your cares on him and uh and see what he does, and and you know, he as long as he wants us to do what we're doing, we're gonna be in business.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you're also discipling financial advisors to to make sure that the advice that they're giving to their clients is sound biblical advice. Uh, how many advisors and kingdom advisors now?
SPEAKER_00Well, in our company, we have about 120 advisors, and yeah, we're in the business of wisdom for wealth for life. So wisdom for your money, dispensing God's uh word on what about money, wisdom for your life, which is to be purposeful and generous, and wealth for life, which is generational. And so in our company we have about 120, and then and then Ron Blue, when when um he retired from our company back in 2002, started a group called Kingdom Advisors, which are Christian advisors that want to apply biblical principles. So, really, Ron has taken what we built here at Blue Trust and and began to train other folks on on how to think and how to how to do that. And there's thousands of kingdom advisors. So um, but yeah, I like to say we're the gold standard, and we kind of started it uh back in 1979 and have been a forerunner um of this whole movement that there's biblical advice that can be dispensed in a wise way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. As I've been studying Christ center companies over the last 10 years, I have noticed that the largest concentration of business owners who are seeking to really do things overtly biblically and and for Christ come from the financial advisory world. And and I think that is a testament to what what you all started, and it really is a movement. And and there's a lot of uh other organizations that have sprung up, you know, kind of since then. Um, but it it's it's from business people discipling business people to disciple uh other business people and their customers and their clients. Um, so thank you for the important work that you've been doing. Um, this is a question that's uh oh, I got this question recently from one of our listeners um who follows our blog podcast. Um, he asked the question because he and he's in the meta, just for context, and this is a little bit kind of off the uh on a bit of a tangent here. Um he's in in a medical company, and there's people that owe him money. And he's trying to do things biblically, trying to um, you know, be um be be charitable, trying to be understanding of people's financial situations. But he's wanting to know is it okay for a Christian company to hire a debt collector?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a good question. Um, you know, I think you know, you need to use the opportunities and the the um avenues that are available to you to try to collect the debt. But I think at the end of the day, it's just like in a personal loan situation, you'll be willing to walk away from it. Um so I I think the question there would be how much pressure you bring and and and how far you go with that. Um I mean, if it's just a case of them administratively, you know, keeping after it for a period of time to see if they can get paid, probably nothing wrong with that. But if it comes to a high pressure, you know, threatening situation, probably at that point you may want to consider, hey, you know, God causes the increase and um the decrease, and and at some point you have to say he's got it. And so, you know, the idea of not suing and taking it that next step, I think, would be appropriate.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But there's a couple of different options, right? You can continue to pursue the debt yourself in-house, or you can hire a uh a collections company, which I don't know if you know of any Christian companies like that that really um aren't going to really threaten people in in ways that are that are just really evil and ungodly. Uh, because I know that those are certainly out there as well. Um, you know, how how do you practically perceive that?
SPEAKER_00You know, Darren, I you're this is way outside of my, you know, we help people get out of debt. So what you've asked me, we've never experienced or even been asked that question.
SPEAKER_01But your customer, your clients are though on the receiving end of this, right?
SPEAKER_00Well, they could be, but if they have a business and we've been counseling them, we hopefully have got them in a situation where if they did have that happen, they could walk away from it and not have to pursue it. So I come back to what I said earlier. I think having just doing the caveat that I don't have the answer to your question, I would think that as a Christian business owner, if somebody owes me money, you know, I pursue it to a certain level. If there's somebody that can can take that administrative burden off of me and pursue it for a period of time, I may try I may let them do that. But then at some point, I'm probably just gonna have to say, hey, um I'm I'm gonna walk away from that and continue on. So sorry I don't have a better answer, um, but I don't have an answer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, it's it's certainly certainly a tough issue. Um, but if you do find out about a company that's is doing this in a in a biblical sort of way, I mean, I guess that's what's what kind of happens when you give it to a debt collection company is you're selling them the debt, pennies on the dollar, and then they can you know try to get whatever they can get out of it. But as far as their tactics go, you would definitely. Want to find out how they operate before you hire a company like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I and like I said, Darren, I don't I don't have any experience in that, wouldn't even know how to advise. It's like if somebody owes me money and they're not paying, I've asked them to pay me, um, and I've done that for a period of time in a godly way, then at some point um I may just have to write it off. You know, I'm not even sure I would take the next step about debt collection. Um depends on, you know, so yeah, that's that's where you have to ask God for wisdom, give some counsel, and um make the right decision.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's a good answer. So blue trust.com is the website, and and you also have um an a number of books. Do you want to go ahead and just kind of let people know what a good next step would be to hear more from you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, obviously you go to Blue Trust and check out our company, but and we're a holistic fee-only um Christian uh financial advisor, and we're a trust company, so we can provide trust services as well, which we became a trust company in 2017, so that's seven years ago now. Um, but we've also got some books, Your Life Well Spend, is one of our flagship books, talks about you manage your money, not to have more money, but to have more life. So that's a book that's kind of a bedrock. It's celebrating its 30-year anniversary this year. It was written in 1994 to help people put money in the context of their life. Um, we've written a book called Leverage, which challenges people to leverage the currency of that which is passing away, their material wealth into the currency of that which will last forever. That's another resource we have. Uh, we wrote a book on what makes a leader great, which kind of codifies some of this stuff we've been talking about. How do you train your people? How do you build up the next generation? What's it mean to be a future leader? Um, and that was really designed here again. We wrote the difference book to codify our covenantal culture. We wrote the leadership book to kind of codify what we've done at this company uh to build our leadership team. Um then just a fun book um The Truth About Money Lies is a storybook, which people might enjoy. It's an easy read. You can just read whatever chapter you want to read about. It's got stories that suck you into the lie we believe and the truth from God's word that counteracts the lie. And then your money made simple is just a real simple how-to book. So those are some of the resources we have available. We have advisors all over the country, like I said, 120 or so that can um meet with people and individuals and couples and help them get on a good stewardship journey.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Blue Trust.com is the website. Russ Crosson, thank you so much for spending time with me and our listeners today and helping us grow and manage money um in a in a way that's more glorifying to God.
SPEAKER_00Well, Darren, thanks for having me. And um just privileged to always share what God's taught us over four and a half decades. I'm pleased to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.