How We Stopped Fighting About Money - The Crown Stewardship Podcast | Season 2, Episode 1

Initially, it was learning that God owns it all. It is His, and He entrusts us with resources to manage. That jarred the grip that money had on my life, it was because if I'm the owner, then I'm keeping score by what I own, but if I'm the steward, my score keeping changes to becoming faithful. Well hello and welcome to the first episode of a new season of the Crowns Georgia podcast. My name is Ryan, I'm joined here by Chuck and Anne Bentley, Chuck the CEO of Crown. Welcome. Yeah, nice to be here, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. We are excited about this new season, we want to talk through a lot of practical pain points that people are feeling out there, I just think of people getting started in the housing market and thinking through mortgages, and then folks are dealing with rising health care costs, child care is going through the roof. So there's just a lot of pain out there, and we know that God's got a lot of practical advice in scripture for helping us through that. But before we get too far in, I want to give people just a brief introduction of who you are, and so if you don't mind, I'm going to take us back to your college season where the two of you meet for the first time, how did that happen, Chuck? Well I was sitting behind Anne in class, we hadn't really met or talked. She was very smart and we got our first exam back, she had made a 95 and I made the inverse of that grade on the first exam. So I just look back at it today and think how did I end up in a situation where I'm helping people with their finances, because I needed Anne to help me when we got started. I was delighted to meet Chuck, he was very popular and just a fun person. That's great, so you meet, you fall in love quite quickly, I think you get married before even graduating from college, is that right? Yeah, we had known each other six weeks, I had made up my mind that I was in love, in fact I went to the doctor on campus and told him I had butterflies constantly, I couldn't study, something was wrong with me, I was losing my focus, and he literally wrote out

a prescription that said you're in love. And I looked at it and I said I think you're right, and so I just told Anne, I love you, I'd like to get married, will you marry me? That was only six weeks after meeting her, so it was rather quick. So young and in love, get married, like a lot of people experience, bringing two different perspectives into marriage has all sorts of challenges, I think you're figuring each other out, learning personalities and styles of doing different things. What did that look like in terms of finances? What different contexts were you bringing? Maybe Anne to start with you, what was your background and the way you're raised with finances? I'm the oldest of five children, both my mom and dad were teachers, so we had had to learn to get by on little, and as far as I knew, I didn't know that we didn't have much, we were happy, content, and I just, I know they were savers, had to be. I would describe Anne as being frugal, and maybe some would say ultra frugal, she knew how to stretch a penny into a copper wire, and that was just foreign to me. I had no training in that whatsoever. It was a year after, right within a year after we fell in love, that we got married, and I think it was then we discovered that we were complete opposites, you know, like wait a minute, we're not even on the same planet in some key areas of our life, and that started to create friction. We loved each other, but now we had to learn how to function as a couple, to becoming one, and money was a sticking point, because our upbringings were just completely opposite. I grew up with a father in the oil and gas business. He likes risk, you drill wells to get rich, that's the whole focus of your career calling is fine to oil, and hope that it comes bubbling up out of the ground, and you're rich overnight. And so when she was helping me to understand what it meant to be frugal, it was like a foreign language, Ryan. Were there any belief systems, I mean you hadn't been exposed to the Bible's perspective on finances yet, Chuck, and what were some of the things you exposed to behaviors that

maybe formed how you dealt with money? I think I've-- The more successful that I could become, you know, the happier it would be. So I had an inherent drive for more. And I thought more was always better. Never occurred to me that controlling our spending was something that was essential. It was just increase, increase, increase. Grow the top line at all times. - Didn't you have something in your wallet with some goals on it? - Yeah, you didn't have to bring that up, but I carried four goals in my wallet. And embarrassingly, Ryan, they were all about more money. What I was gonna do with it, you know, what I wanted to drive and where I wanted to live and the clubs I wanted to belong to. But I didn't have a single spiritual goal, not one. - Mm-hmm. - Even though I was a Christian. - Yeah. And you come out of school and find that you have a bunch of success and you figure out you're a good salesman, good businessman. It starts all happening for you. And then, and you are watching this and just seeing some things you don't like. You've seen Chuck's heart going down a different road. - Yeah, he was drifting away from me.

Home, physically, but not there mentally and certainly not spiritually. - Well, and I think too, I was making really bad financial decisions. And so when you open the program talking about financial pain, I think we've experienced all of it. I can't think of anything that we have not been through as a couple in our many years of marriage. And then trying to figure out a way to work through that. Like, how do we fix these financial problems so that they're not just temporarily solved, but they go away. And that's been a part of our journey together. Early on, we had to figure out who was gonna be in charge of the bills. Because one day, it all came to a head. - Well, yeah, Anne likes to remind people that I was really bad with paying the bills. I was, because I am a irrational optimist. I mean, I think everything's always gonna work out for the best, even if I don't have a plan or I don't know how it's gonna work out for the best, I'm just sure it will. And so I would, when I paid the bills for many years, I would just get around to it whenever I thought it was time. Whether that was when the bill collector thought it was time or not, so it led to a lot of problems. - Yeah. And then, Anne, just going back to when you see Chuck drifting, what is your approach in that moment?

I'm sure there's many listening or watching who have a spouse who's just, they think so differently and they don't know what to do. What did you do in that moment? - I went to an older woman that I knew through Bible study because Chuck's a dominant personality. I'm an introvert. - You probably can't tell how it wouldn't have known that now. - And I just told her I do not have a spiritual leader at home and I don't even know how to go about talking to him about it. And she said, "Pray, don't nagging, don't correct him, just pray." So that's what I did for many years. - Yeah, it wasn't an overnight answer to that prayer. - Yeah, no, it seldom is. But, and then you discover a crown program somewhere in that journey. Can you share that story? - Yes, once Sunday in the bulletin, they expressed that they were holding a crown Bible study on money and I thought, "Oh gosh, this is our answer." So we got home and I said, "Hey, Chuck, can we do this Bible study together?" And he said, "I already know everything about money. What good would that do?" So that sort of put a damper on it. - Yeah, I wasn't too interested. I liked saying I was like a cat near water. If you ever try to give a cat a bath, you realize that they're very resistant and slippery and difficult to corner and Anne was trying her best

to get me interested and I had zero interest. I just thought, "Why would you study the Bible on that topic?" You know, this isn't salvation, it's not discipleship. If I need to know more about money, I'll just go to a local community college or an executive program or look it up. By the way, when she said it was in the bulletin, that tells you a number of years ago. - Yes. Back when they used to hand out Bolton's at church. - You finally agreed if we could do it on a Sunday night. So I called the man organizing it. He said, "Well, we have one spot open on Sunday nights for a couple who will commit to leading a crown college." And I said, oh, we'll do it. I didn't even ask Chuck. I knew better. And so I was cornered. I ended up in the crown class. I think that was 1999. And I didn't want to be there. I had zero interest in it. But Anne wanted me to be there. I had committed to Sunday nights. It was on a Sunday night. And I showed up in the class. And I would say, Ryan, I was immediately set back. Realizing that the Bible talked a lot about money. That's quite a painful moment for you, right?

I mean, you love the Lord, but just had never been exposed to the financial perspective of the Bible. No, I grew up in church. I walked an aisle when I was seven years old. I owned a Bible. I knew something. And I'd read lots of books and lots of teaching. But nobody had ever taught me about money. And I think I realized my ignorance immediately, like from Genesis to Revelation, there's passages on money, like almost more than 3,000. And I probably didn't know more than two. And I realized I was in deficit. I was spiritually ignorant. And that changed the way I saw the Scripture. Like it became immediately relevant to me. Because we were dealing with financial challenges. We were not aligned as a couple. And the Bible was speaking to me personally, like there was something there that I needed to know. And those other couples that we went through the class with were so humble, so transparent. It gave us the freedom to express our pain. It was total healing. Well, and I think they probably realized how arrogant I was. I mean, I really thought I was the smartest guy in the room. And I just didn't need to be there. I don't know if you've ever been in a class like that, but you were ready to get it over with. That's how I started to be.

Initially, yeah. He did it. But just-- I mean, that's a complete 180 transformation for you. You realize the sinfulness of your desires at that point and just fully commit. And that's a huge turning point in your marriage as well. Well, I actually repented. And repenting means I changed my mind. I admitted I was wrong, that God was right, and that I would obey God. And that was over money. It wasn't over any other sin. And I actually realized my attitude was classified as an egregious sin in the Scripture. It is egregious. It's on par with any of the other ugly, dirty sins. And I was just as guilty as if I had committed any of the other sins that people tend to classify as terrible. But greed, coveting, idolatry, the love of money, all of that had taken over my life. And I was ashamed of it. I was truly convicted by that. We were memorizing Scripture each week. And that Scripture just entered our hearts. It totally changed how we saw the world, how we saw each other, how we saw our place in the world, how we were stewards of what God had given us. The recognition that it would never be mine, no matter how hard I worked, that was my ego,

driving me to have more and more and more. And it's because I wanted it to be mine. I wanted my wealth to be my source of influence, not my walk with the Lord, but the money. And that's where I was wrong. Well, and you also wanted to buy me things. And I'm like, I don't need-- I'm content. I don't need more. I now buy-- whatever I buy for Anne comes with a receipt in case it's going to get returned. Because she doesn't have much interest in having stuff. How long is that transformation for you guys? What is that period of time where you go through this turnaround? It was dramatic, Ryan. It was within weeks of starting the class. But within a year, the whole way we handled money was completely different. I started reading the Bible very aggressively to learn what it said about money. I became immersed in it. And then the process was learning to apply it. And that meant working with Anne to align with the decisions we were making. Our beliefs were changing. Now, our behaviors needed to align with what God said is the best way to manage money. Well, and then we had to lead other classes. I mean, we were committed to lead one the next semester. So we did that at church. We started leading them in our home.

The process of realigning our finances took about a year. And then from there, it was just progress, progress, progress. And so this has now been 26 years of, on the same page, making good financial decisions. And, you know, the results have been incredibly transformative to our lives. Yeah, you've almost got these two phases or two phases of marriage. That 21 BC, we can call it the foreground. That's exactly the way I would say it. Yeah, before we became stewards. It's that transformation of the 21 years of ownership, 26 years now of stewardship. And that crossover is what made all the difference. And I wanted to point out the one year, a few weeks, of significant heart change in a year of just lifestyle change. As a point of hope for people, just being exposed to God's principles and then applying as practical wisdom can literally turn your life around and free you from some of that pain. And so just to say to those watching and listening, there is hope. There is an exit in an all-frame PM. I would just add to, Ryan, you don't get into financial problems overnight. Bear seldom, is it quick? It's a series of decisions made over time. And it takes time to work out of those. But when God sets you on the right path, there's hope. We got out of debt. We started giving generously. We reduced our lifestyle, made choices that started to create financial margin that we had not had for years. And I would say our stress went down, our peace went up, and our connection

and the joy of working together started to really rapidly increase. And Anne had been waiting on that. It was an answer to a long-term prayer for me to finally agree with God on how to manage money and then to get aligned as a husband and wife. Yeah, really practical, tangible results. So just to fast forward the story a little bit, you actually start leading Crown courses at church in your home. And then eventually actually get invited to join the Crown team. Is that around 2000? Yeah, we started on staff in the year 2000. We had four children at the time. And it was a major decision. It wasn't a career choice, Ryan. It was a calling. We knew that it was so transformative to us that we wanted other people to know. Whether we were volunteers or full-time doing it, we knew God had changed us so that we could help others on that same journey. Yeah. And that was the heart of Larry Beketh. You joined Crown under his leadership initially. And would you just paint a picture for those who don't know him? There's very few people who don't know Larry. But for those who don't, just his heart behind why he actually started Crown. Yeah, he was the pioneer of a comprehensive view of what the Bible says about money. He was really the first person to write extensively on that subject. He wrote more than 70 books, sold millions of copies to daily radio programs. And his heart was the Great Commission. In Matthew 28, the Bible says, "Go into all the world and teach them all that I've commanded you that I've shared with you to pass on to others." And he said, "Money is missing.

We're not teaching people how to manage money." And so that was his motivation. And we overlapped with Larry. And since that time, we've now grown globally to where we could say we're probably the largest financial, biblically financial stewardship teaching ministry in the world. We're teaching now in more than 140 nations. Yeah. And this all began in 1976. So we're talking about 50 years on now and still as passionate, I think the need is greater than ever. I actually came across some stats this week, which are just heartbreaking, honestly. But a couple I saw was 88% of Americans entered this year, 2026, in financial stress of some kind. And consumer debt is at a record high, credit card debt at a record high. And then Gallup and Edward Jones released a study that said 83% of Americans. So roughly 216 million people are under financial stress or strain on certainty. space. And that just kind of drives us gets us up in the morning, keeps us chasing us. It's it's a bleak picture. But I think the privilege of being part of Crown is we get to see the other side as well of people experiencing freedom from this pain. And that is all through the learning of God's Word about finances and then applying that. So just to let people know, we are still super excited about this and know that there's a lot of work ahead of us still. And would you touch on some of our core beliefs, we're going to get into some of the really practical pieces through the season. But what are some of the foundational things that Crown really hang our hat on? Well, I'll go back to the one thing that really made a difference in our lives. Initially, was learning that God owns it all. It is his. And he entrusts us with resources to manage. So God owns it all was a big one. Well, first Chronicles 29, 11 and 12 starts with everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord. And this is your kingdom. That was King David's prayer. He just said out loud, this is all God's. And then in Psalm 24 one, he says the earth is the Lord's and everything in it and all the people who dwell there. So we belong to God. We're not taking anything with us. And that was, that jarred the grip that money had on my life loose.

Because if I'm the owner, then I'm keeping score by what I own. But if I'm the steward, my score keeping changes to becoming faithful. And I think that's the second big principle Ryan is switching from trying to be successful with money to becoming faithful. And success is determined sort of by my standards or the world standards. Faithfulness is determined by God's standard. Who am I being faithful to and what's required of me? And that aligned my heart with what God wanted from me. That was a big transformation. Yeah. And then I would just add a third one for the purpose of this conversation that we have seen over and over that behavior change without heart change is unsustainable. And so we are very intentional about while having all the practical pieces being very clear on the foundational belief system that needs to be shifted and aligned with God's word. No doubt, Ryan. You see in American culture, what's now a phenomenon called repetitive bankruptcies where it happens over and over and over. And the tragedy of that is that people fall into that without knowing how to ever avoid it in the future. And they repeat the same mistakes. And I think I may have stayed on the repetitive track of mistakes over and over and over without a solution that came from outside my own knowledge. And I like to say money doesn't solve financial problems. It's what you believe about money that will solve the financial problem. And that's where we start is what do you believe about money and then how do you apply that in a practical way so that you don't repeat the same mistakes? Very good. And as we started land the plane here, are there some topics that were transformational in your journey that you're excited to unpack as the season unfolds here? Well, for me, it's giving because Chuck and I would give if we had a little leftover, you know, on a Sunday morning when they passed the plate back back in those days. And when we went through the class, I asked Chuck if we could start giving regularly. And what'd you say? Well, I asked her what decades she would like to make this change. You know, I wanted at least 10 year runway. We were giving 2.6% of our gross income at the time, which is the national average. And Anne wanted to go to 10% immediately. And I really thought that was impossible. And I explained to her it would change everything in our lives, our lifestyle, what we drive, what we wear, where we go, where we eat out. And she looked at me and said exactly. That's exactly what would change. And so we made that change. But also Ryan, we developed a holistic view of being God steward. It's how we earned money, how we gave it, how we saved it, how we were spending, how we made choices to spend money, and then how to invest it. were what led us to what we would call freedom.

Freedom from the control that money had over our lives because you can be in slavery, whether you're in scarcity or in abundance, you can be a slave to money on either end of that spectrum. And we wanted to be totally free. And that's where God led us. - And that's part of what we call the virtuous cycle. And that's helped so many people just understanding how God's laid that out for us. So yeah, we're excited to unpack that and many more other practical things this season. But thank you both for your time today. And thank you for joining us. We are praying that you find hope and encouragement from this and a lot of practical wisdom that you can implement in your own lives. And so we will see you in the next episode. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You