David Wills On Larry Burkett

with Larry Burkett. When did you first meet Larry? - Oh, I have a sense that I met him prior to coming to NCF, but really my relationship with him began probably in 1998, 'cause that's when I came on with NCF, 'cause he was one of my three bosses. So Terry Parker, who's really the founder of NCF, Ron Blue and Larry Burkett were my bosses, which is just incredible. That's when I really started to get to know Larry was back at that time. A little bit of mixed emotions. Traveling up the road to Gainesville to spend time with Larry was just, I mean, I don't know how many people got to do that, but I thought, wow, this is my best day. And Larry was like a wisdom vending machine, okay? And it didn't matter what. In fact, I would think that in all of my interactions with Larry, I bet we rarely talked about financial matters. You can ask Larry pretty much anything about anything and just succinct, clear, actionable wisdom. Just boom, boom, boom, boom. And so I would travel up there and sit at his feet. I experienced him as strong as he was humble, as smart as he was just common, like a normal human being, but he was a genius. And wow, I was taken with him the first time I ever met with him and I don't know,

it was just life-changing for me. You know, his influence was global, I mean, there wouldn't be an NCF if Larry had not been involved because Larry's influence personally in Terry's life, not just as a lawyer client, but as a mentor, a disciple, or a teacher, I don't think he would've ever even done it if it hadn't been for Larry's influence. NCF is something that God has just put his hand on and decided I'm going to use this thing. I actually don't know all of the statistics. I can tell you from a grant-making standpoint last year, it was over $2 billion, it was granted out, I'd say well over 300,000 grants went out. There's probably about 30,000 families that now use NCF. And it's staggering. I do often wonder what are those up in heaven now? I mean, I think that a day doesn't go by where somebody doesn't walk up to Larry in heaven and say, "Oh, thank you so much." It was your influence that caused this and this and this and some of them probably had nothing to do with finances. Larry would be one of the first real examples of what we would now today call an abundance mentality, right? He didn't have a scarcity mindset. He didn't have an ownership mindset. He might've been the first person that I ever met that really didn't think he owned anything. If Larry was still here, he would have to kind of up his game on challenging people to be open-handed because it's more difficult today to be open-handed

than any other time before. But now is the time that, I mean, if we're gonna go all in, I mean, if we're gonna slide all those chips on the table, this is it, this is the time. There is no imaginable way that any of us should think that we shouldn't be laying up treasure in heaven. We are probably 24 months away from there not being such a thing as an unengaged people group on earth. We're right there, we're knocking on the door of engaging, at least to some degree with the gospel, every single one of them. I'll assure you from where Larry's sitting today, he would look at all of us and say, "Press in, keep pressing in, fund the Great Commission, "fund the greatest commandments, loving your neighbor." This is it, we are at this time where the gospel is spreading like wildfire and who knows how much longer we may have. (gentle music)