Barnabas Foundation Blog

When The Navigators first came on board as members in 2020, they had a few self-identified struggles they hoped to overcome. They described their planned giving team as overworked and over-tapped. In particular, they struggled to maintain their charitable gift annuity program.

Q: What’s the advantage of talking with a planner when I can just go to my lawyer? A: You absolutely need to work with your personal attorney once you are ready to execute your legal documents. However, most people have many questions and concerns to work through before they reach that point.

Week after week, we meet with generous Christians to help them create estate plans that honor God, provide for their families and support the causes close to their hearts. If there is one commonality, it’s that one or more decisions have kept them from completing their plans.

When I’m driving down the interstate, I’m always amazed by the number of trucks on the road. Some of them are very flashy; others are plain. The look of the truck isn’t important. What really matters is their purpose: getting important commodities or materials from point A to point B.

For someone who began a banking career at age 17, Elanor sure had a low opinion of money. “I hated it,” she explains. “Customers were so rude, and the more money they had, the ruder they were!” Then Elanor came to know Jesus Christ as her Savior and Lord. Slowly, her perspective on wealth began to change.

Someone recently told me about a meaningful experience he’d shared with his father as a young man. At that time, he had believed in Jesus, but he did not love Him. The gentleman recalled how his father had placed his hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay. When you are my age, you will come to love Jesus the way I do – and you will want to serve Him because of the way you love Him.”

Inside Doug and Traci’s Journey of Generosity Just nine years ago, Traci had a rare type of heart attack called a “spontaneous coronary artery dissection.” Her arteries were pristine, but somehow, they tore. “That was a wake-up call from the Lord,” recalls Traci. “When you have a life-changing event, God gets a hold of your heart and refocuses your priorities.

Every spring, my wife and I enjoy planting flowers and vegetables in our garden together. We have an annual ritual where we go to a friend’s local greenhouse to select our bedding plants. Sometime back in February, I drove by that greenhouse and was surprised to already see a large pallet of bedding soil out front. It occurred to me that our springtime purchase of flowers is made possible because of those who have already readied the beds, planted and watered the seeds and meticulously prepared for the planting season.