As I sit here and think about my years at Church Investors Fund, the memories begin to flood in. It all started for me during the NAB Triennial Conference of 2000 in Sacramento, when I was called to become the new president. It has been 24 years now that I have held this position in Canada, after turning over the position over in the US to Igor Mokhov four years ago. This January, I will be passing the torch in Canada as well, and so, this will be my last blog as president. It makes me ponder what has been.

Twenty-four years is a long time to do anything. It’s well over half my working life and probably close to a third of my entire life. I started writing this blog in 2010 because I had so many thoughts in my head that I needed to release some of them for my own health’s sake. If you have followed my thoughts for these 14 years, thank you for giving me a few minutes of your day to help clear my mind. I have always been prone to muse; it runs deep in my family genes, and it has been cathartic to let some of these thoughts out of my head and onto paper.

Looking back, I can say it has been a blessing to work with the Church, something that was not my original aim when I started working years before coming to Church Investors Fund. I was named after my grandmother’s brother, who was a career missionary to Nigeria, and my grandmother told me when I was young that I was destined to become a preacher like him. Of course, I thought otherwise, so I trained first to be a diplomat, then I changed to law before finally settling on finance after finding the first two unfulfilling. It was my ease with numbers that eventually led me into finance and later my role at Church Investors Fund. So, maybe she was right in a small way, as I have done a fair amount of speaking in churches over these past 24 years.

It has been a rewarding job in many ways. For one, I love to travel, and this job has given me lots of that. It has also been educational, as churches are very unique in many ways, and I like change. It has also been spiritually stretching, as financing churches is like no other type of finance.

Pastors as a group are not often gifted with finance acumen and this has allowed me to play a significant part in helping the Church body function more effectively. I feel content in knowing I played my part, as I was called to.

I have also been around long enough to see some long-term trends in the Church that have given me pause and have led to many sleepless nights.

The Church of today is generally more superficial than it was previously, more emotionally driven than it was once, and more personality-based than it was when I started. Each of these things on their own are very concerning and, I believe, has made the roots of the average Christian run shallower than they did a generation ago.

Yet, there are also a number of positives. For one, the average congregant is more apt to go to church because they really want to know God, and they are less likely to go just because they grew up in the Church. Today people are more likely to come from an unchurched background than before, so churches as a whole are less formal, and maybe more “real” than they once were, and people are more acutely understanding of their need for a Savior than in traditional churches in the past, maybe because so many come with much more baggage now.

As it was in Jesus’s time, the true Church of today understands that its reason for being is that it desperately needs God. In contrast, in the church of yesterday, so many appeared to grow up and live their whole lives in the church without clearly understanding that essential fact.

Looking back, I have spent many restless nights worrying about things I could not fix. Yes, some of them needed to be worried about, but often there was little I could do to help with them.

That’s the thing that sticks with me about the Church: It’s not natural. The proof of its Supernatural nature is the simple fact that it still exists. If it was not supernatural, we would have killed it off so many centuries ago.

In 2020, the Anglican Church of Canada predicted that by 2040, there would be no more members, attendees, or givers left. That may be true, but it does not mean the Church as a whole will die. Like so many times in the past, it will just reinvent itself in another form.

Charles Russell, of Watch Tower fame, predicted the Church would lose its “role” in the year 1878. He revised his prediction to 1881, then again to 1914, and finally 1918, but this has not stopped the growth of his movement, which is very much still around today, even though he is a little off the mark.

The truth remains simply that the Church will have its role on this earth until Christ comes again and takes it away with Him. Until then, we stumble along, making as many mistakes as we do advances; yet, through it all, He still remains in control despite what we may do.

So, I rest in the knowledge that He remains vested in His Church. You and I would be wise to do the same.

-The Loan Arranger, signing off for now