ROI Ministry: The Don't Bury It Podcast

What happens when the president of your local pro-life pregnancy center discovers he owns three stocks of companies manufacturing abortion drugs?

In Episode 22 of The Don't Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews Robert Netzly, founder and CEO of Inspire Investing and CEO of Inspire Advisors, about how a personal conviction moment grew into a $5.5 billion+ biblically responsible investing movement.

Robert shares how he stumbled across biblically responsible investing while looking for a Bible study to teach at his church on finance; how he discovered he owned three stocks of companies manufacturing abortion drugs while serving as president of his local pro-life pregnancy center; how he left Wells Fargo Private Client Services with less than two months of savings in the bank; how he started over with just a laptop doing "some sort of biblical something investing."

The conversation also covers:

• How what started as a local hometown advisor practice grew into hundreds of Christian advisors hearing from a friend of a friend about what they were doing
• How Robert realized this was not his movement but a movement of God's Spirit
• The 2015 launch of Inspire Investing LLC and the 2017 listing of their first two ETFs on the New York Stock Exchange
• The 2018 closing bell ringing at the NYSE where Christian financial ministry leaders representing more than $100 billion in assets gathered, including Kingdom Advisors (Atlanta), Thrivent, and National Christian Foundation (NCF)
• The spontaneous worship moment at the NYSE when Amazing Grace broke out across the trading floor
• Walking around the corner from the NYSE to find a church hosting a gay pride festival
• How Christians in America own $22.4 trillion of stock, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs — 49.7% of all investment assets in the United States
• How Microsoft recently opened up faith-based options in their corporate giving matching program after Inspire's shareholder engagement efforts
• The free Inspire Impact Score tool at inspireinsight.com where anyone can type a ticker symbol and see what's actually inside any investment
• Give50 — Inspire's commitment of 50% of net profits from management fees to Christian ministries

Robert closes with a challenge: don't be afraid. Learn what you actually own. Consider how you can be more generous with aligned ministries like those on ROI Ministry's Top Ten list.

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

In Episode 21 of The Don't Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews David Mimms - co-founder of ROI Ministry and chairman of Mimms Enterprises - about how David heckled Tim from the back row at an Equip training - and two decades later they had launched an organization that has reviewed over one hundred ministries each year.

David shares how his grandfather founded Mimms Enterprises in 1936 after being recruited from South Carolina by Governor Talmadge himself; how his father joined after serving in the Air Force; how David grew up doing construction from knee-high through Georgia Tech ('76); how he met Nora while building a power plant in Ottumwa, Iowa when she was eighteen; how he rededicated his life to Christ at age 23 ("a warm light came through the window… I got this"); how he returned to Atlanta to join Mimms Enterprises.

Tim shares how he bombed so badly speaking in front of a thousand people in Indonesia that "most of them were sleeping"; how he ran into David again at what wasn't even a Christian conference ("I don't think there's any coincidences"); how he showed up at David's office with World Christian Trends covered in yellow sticky tabs ("I've gotta come over"); how David named it on the spot ("Well let's just call it ROI Ministry"); how they launched with a board that voted Tim down on needing a 501(c)(3).

The conversation also covers:

• Their early vetting trips meeting Morgan Jackson (Faith Comes By Hearing), Steve Calliper, Kathryn Barnhart
• Getting thrown into a Jesus Film Harvest Partners board meeting in Kansas before they engaged Calvin Edwards as their independent vetter
• Hugh McClellan handing them The Proclaimer saying "this ministry needs to be on your top ten list"
• The November 1–3, 2013 Reynolds Plantation retreat at Ritz Carlton Lodge on Lake Oconee where half their Top Ten ministries sent one couple each
• Nora's Schindler's List moment challenging everyone about possessions vs. kingdom investment ("60,000 people die every day")
• The Sanibel beach houses ("the Sanibel 7") where they've hosted multiple retreats since then
• Talking Rock Retreat Center near Ellijay — nearly 200 acres that comfortably sleeps twelve couples

David closes with three challenges for listeners:

1. Walk your life out in faith and obedience.
2. Treat every meeting as if God has something to say through it.
3. Pick one or two mission organizations ROI Ministry has already vetted — no more than three — dip your toe in it.

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

What if every Christian family is on a decline curve unless something interrupts it?

In Episode 20 of The Don't Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews Bill High, founder of Legacy Stone Ministry and founder of The Signatry, about why generational decline is built into every family - and what the families who break that pattern actually do.

Bill shares how he grew up in poverty in the Missouri Ozarks, lost his dad as a teenager, came to faith through a small church plant in a town of 100 people, stumbled into the donor-advised fund world through urban ministry, and ultimately founded The Signatry around a single idea: wouldn't it be great if we could write the last check that would go to the last missionary group reaching the last tribe.

Tim and Bill also discuss:

• Why "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is repeated in every country around the world
• The Green family / Hobby Lobby case study: four generations at the table, 23 great-grandchildren, 50% of profits to the kingdom
• Why Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are really about how you govern a family
• The Deuteronomy 6 / Shema model of intentional faith transmission from age zero to five
• The three buckets of family thriving: relational health, structure and governance, training the next generation
• Why giving your kids a big check is one of the worst things you can do
• The sobering data point that 11 of the 12 most generous US families started strong as devout Christians but only one has a Christ focus today
• Why generosity is up 2.6x worldwide and 3x in the US over 25 years but giving to unreached people groups has not moved
• Why $158 billion a year goes to pets while unreached people groups remain largely unfunded
• How hyper-individualism is shrinking both the birth rate and the giving pie
• Why Bill believes we are living in one of the greatest times in history for both wealth accumulation and gospel multiplication

Bill is co-author with David Green of The Legacy Life and has worked with families across more than 25 years through Legacy Stone Ministry.

Learn more about Bill's work with families at Legacy Stone Ministry (https://legacystone.com) and grab a copy of The Legacy Life here: https://legacystone.com/legacylife. For consulting and advisory work, visit https://7thgenconsulting.com/. You can also find Bill at https://billhigh.com

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

How does a Christian wealth manager move from career to calling - and then scale what a mentor built?

In Episode 19 of The Don't Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews Jeff Thomas, founder and CEO of Arkos Global, about the mentorship and three questions that have shaped a firm directing over $500 million to Christian ministries since 2017.

Jeff shares how Ron Blue shaped his entire career - from writing him a literal letter in the early 2000s, to three years of discipleship over coffee at the Atlanta airport hotel before Kingdom Advisor coaching events, to hearing God say audibly in their last session together: "I want you to scale what this guy started." That moment sent Jeff on a sixteen-year discernment path that ultimately led him to leave Morgan Stanley and launch Arkos Global in 2017.

Tim also shares his own personal Ron Blue moment - walking into Kingdom Advisors' headquarters off the freeway with a white paper on ministry vetting, getting confirmation from Ron Blue himself, Hugh McClellan of Generous Giving, and David Wills of National Christian Foundation (NCF) that the idea was worth pursuing. That meeting became the catalyst for ROI Ministry itself.

The conversation closes with three questions Ron taught Jeff that Arkos still uses with every client in transition today: How much is enough for you? How much is enough for your kids? And what do you do with the rest? 

This is the third episode in a new Don't Bury It series on Christian wealth management, generosity, stewardship, and kingdom impact.

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

How does a Christian wealth manager move a family from generous giving to wise, intentional stewardship? 

In Episode 18 of The Don't Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews Brian Cochran, CFP, CKA, and majority shareholder of John Moore Associates, about the role of the kingdom advisor at the moment a gift gets made.

Brian shares how John Moore Associates grew from $300M to $1.1B in assets under management while tracking more than $50M in cumulative client charitable giving since 2012. He explains the firm's "10 + 1" framework — 10% of income plus 1% of assets — and why the 1% unlocks a category of giving most believers have never considered. He walks through the "deeper with fewer" discipline that has replaced small-gift-sprawl in many of his client portfolios, and he describes a real case where a new client family with a $10M net worth was coached from $50K/year giving into a $1.5M first-year gift and $200K–$400K annually thereafter.

Tim and Brian also discuss:

• Why generosity and stewardship are different callings
• Why American assets have grown 300% over 25 years and what that means for kingdom giving
• How appreciated stock and other non-cash gifts can be more tax-advantageous than cash
• Why asset-based giving through donor-advised funds like those at National Christian Foundation (NCF) is changing the math for Christian families
• What Tim calls EROI — eternal return on investment — and why the risk/reward calculation changes when eternity is the horizon
• The widow's mite, and when God-honoring giving doesn't have to be strategic

Brian is co-author with John Moore of In Succession and The Almighty and the Dollar. He is a CFP and a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA), and a member of Kingdom Advisors.

This is the second episode in a new Don't Bury It series on Christian wealth management, generosity, stewardship, and Kingdom impact.

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

Are Christians generous, but not always wise stewards?

In Episode 17 of The Don’t Bury It Podcast, Tim Barker interviews Chad Jackson, Executive Director of the Jackson Family Foundation, about the difference between giving from good intentions and intentionally stewarding the resources God has entrusted to us.

Tim and Chad discuss the troubling imbalance in Christian giving, including the reality that less than 0.5% of worldwide Christian giving reaches unevangelized and unreached people. They explore why Christians should look beyond emotional reactions and personal connections when choosing where to give, and why wise stewardship requires prayer, discernment, research, and action.

Chad explains the Jackson Family Foundation’s focus on hope, homes, and health, along with its commitment to prayer, presence, and partnership. He shares how the foundation seeks to support gospel-centered ministries serving vulnerable people in hard-to-reach places, often through indigenous leaders and holistic ministry that addresses both physical and spiritual needs.

Together, Tim and Chad ask what it really means to love God with our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and how Christian donors, kingdom advisors, and wealth managers can pursue investments that produce lasting fruit.

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.

The Jesus Film Project has translated a 2-hour film of the life of Jesus - Gospel of Luke, with the words Jesus speaks on screen being the literal words of God - into 2,301 languages. It is freely given to ~1,800 ministry partners and shown in remote, low-literacy communities where 2–3 billion people still live who have never heard of Jesus. Every showing is tied to church planting. 

Tim talks with Josh Newell about how a 45-year-old ministry founded by Paul Eshleman under Bill Bright's leadership grew from a handful of languages to 2,301 - and how an animated version of the same film is now being built to reach a generation whose median age is 30. Plus the "test us on that" answer to large gifts, the partnership math that has Jesus Film bear the development cost while field partners carry the distribution, and the on-mic announcement that Jesus Film Project will appear on ROI Ministry's all-time Top 10 list.

The Jesus Film Project: https://www.jesusfilm.org/

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served - while still sharing the Gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/

Know you're making a difference.

For 13 cents, SERV International feeds one person a real meal — and shares the Gospel with every hand it passes through. To date, SERV has shipped 117 million meals across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, DR Congo, and South Sudan. Their Kenya-based plant can manufacture 1 million meals a day; last year they shipped 13 million. The gap is the opportunity.

In this Partner Highlight, Tim sits down with Steve Kasha, Founder & CEO of SERV International — a Canton, Georgia-based ministry 25 years in the making. Steve's calling story started in a hammock in the Venezuelan jungle, day 4 with no food and no water, when he heard, audibly, the voice that would set the trajectory of his life. Today, SERV runs an orphanage in northwest Kenya, manufactures its own fortified meal blend in-country to bypass the 2–3 month shipping lag, ships a million meals into DRC during the Ebola crisis while every other relief org pulls out, and packages 1,000+ food boxes a month locally in Georgia. Steve's thesis is simple: every bag is an opportunity to pass the gGospel from one hand to the next. ROI Ministry's independent vetting confirmed SERV's 13-cents-per-meal claim — third-party validation, not internal marketing. SERV can absorb a $20M–$50M gift today without sacrificing quality; a second warehouse already sits empty in faith. 

SERV International — https://servone.org

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served — while still sharing the gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/

Know you're making a difference.

For 35 years, YWAM San Diego-Baja's Homes of Hope has built nearly 10,000 homes across 34 countries — sponsored by volunteer teams at $12,000 per home including furniture package, and staffed entirely by self-funded missionaries so every donated dollar stretches into the field. Even at minimum wage, labor and materials given since 1990 total more than $120 million of value to the poor.

In this Partner Highlight, Tim talks with Sean Lambert — Executive Director and President of YWAM San Diego-Baja — and his daughter Andrea East about how an untargeted 1990 offering, a 3-year-old's question, and a woman named Maria living in an abandoned bus became one of the most replicated home-building models on earth. They cover the "five benefits" compounding inside every home — economic, education, health, hope, and spiritual — the "Tanya" story (12-year-old to master's-in-nursing in one generation), the volunteer-leverage math that sends 100% of donations to the field, the Cornelius framework for why anyone can build, and Andrea's Hebrew word "Mishpat" — justice as restoration of God's intentions. Plus: why one Indiana company brought 7,000 employees over 9 years, why 81% of groups come back, and why Sean closed with the Southwest Airlines pilot who told the National Prayer Breakfast: "When you have a destination, you have hope, and hope changes everything."

YWAM San Diego-Baja / Homes of Hope: https://ywamsandiegobaja.org/

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY
ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served — while still sharing the gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/

Know you're making a difference.

For $3.64, MedSend provides one person medical care — through a healthcare worker who shares the gospel with every patient they see. One worker, supported over 4–5 years at $15,000–$25,000 per year, reaches an estimated 100,000 patients over their career. In this Partner Highlight, Tim talks with Rick Allen, MedSend's CEO of 18 years, about how a software executive became a missionary, why the global south is the new frontline for unreached people groups, and what happens when saving a life becomes the bridge to sharing Jesus. Plus: the "Launch" model that eliminates dependency, the 12-CEO summit Rick convened with the largest U.S. sending organizations, and the book "Surrendered Heart."

MedSend: https://medsend.org/

ABOUT ROI MINISTRY ROI Ministry reviews 100+ ministries a year and publishes a top-10 list of those beating the world's best charities on cost per person served — while still sharing the gospel and making disciples. EROI: the eternal return on investment. Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries.

Free resources:
• Top-10 list + 90 reviewed ministries: https://roiministry.org/
• BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Know you're making a difference.