Theology of Stewardship

The Table Podcast - Issues of God and Culture

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Darrell Bock:

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest today is Scott Talbot who also works diligently at the seminary and works with our foundation. And our topic today is stewardship. So Scott, my opening question to you is how did a nice guy like you get into a gig on stewardship? Tell us your story about kind of how you found the slot that you find yourself working in these days?

Scott Talbot:

Okay. When I was younger I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I struggled with direction in life. And so without having a clear direction I just took the next logical step as it presented itself to me. When I finished high school I went to Bible College, they got a very good education there. From there proceeded to seminary, continued to study the Scriptures. Still, wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with my life, although I was pretty sure I didn't want to be a pastor. I enjoyed a lot of that type of work but didn't sense that's where God was calling me. So I ended up in the field of financial planning, a field I really enjoyed. I spent 12 years in the field of financial planning and I loved the work, but there was one thing I struggled with.

I struggled with the idea of doing something that had an eternal impact, particularly with the training and education that I was privileged to receive I wanted to use that in a more direct way to impact people in eternal ways. It was great to help people with their budgets and with insurances and to plan out their finances. But if the only benefit was the here and now to me that wasn't making a whole lot of impact in this world. And so I prayed for years. I asked God to show me what it was he wanted me to do. I had no idea. I said, "God, if you'll write it in the sky, give me some kind of sign I'll do it." But I had no clue what that was. And then one day a friend of mine, actually a friend of a friend came to me and he said, we were just talking casually.

I was sharing with him my story and some of the struggles that I was having. And he said, "You might want to come work with us." And I said, "Well, what is that? What are you doing?" He said, "I work at the foundation at In Touch Ministries, and we have people that work in the field of planned giving. And what we're looking for are people that have number one, pastoral training and number two, a background in financial planning. And we look at our planned giving officers as financial pastors.

So those were the qualifications he was looking for. And as we talked, I could sense that was God's answer to prayer just as clearly as if he had written it in the sky. This was God answering that prayer. Here's where you can use your skills and abilities and experience. All those years that you thought you were going in the wrong direction and use them in a way that honors me, that glorifies me and that taps into that passion for making a difference with regards to eternal things. So that's what led me into the field of planned giving, starting first at In Touch Ministries. And I really, really liked the work. I know where God wants me to be.

Darrell Bock:

So you've been doing foundation work for how long when you put all the organizations together that you've worked with?

Scott Talbot:

22 years.

Darrell Bock:

Oh, wow. So you were at In Touch for how long?

Scott Talbot:

Seven years.

Darrell Bock:

Seven years. And did you go from In Touch to Dallas or was there something in between?

Scott Talbot:

I spent just about 10 years with Campus Crusade for Christ working at their foundation, and then four years at World Vision up in the Seattle area. And then two years ago is when I came here to Dallas to work at the seminary.

Darrell Bock:

So you've seen a variety of organizations that actually work in the area of planned giving have a lot of varied experience with really different kinds of organization. I mean, In Touch as a radio program, CRU is obviously a para-church ministry.

Scott Talbot:

Multifaceted ministry.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. Multifaceted ministry. So yeah. Interesting. I didn't know that, so that's nice to find out. So let's talk a little bit about two sets of questions, what do foundations do, and then what is planned giving? And you can take those in any order that you want.

Scott Talbot:

Okay. Well, they're very much related. A foundation like ours, the foundation at Dallas Theological Seminary and the one I worked at In Touch and at CRU function like a planned giving department. Our primary role is to assist our supporters with ways in which they can give. And so the foundation's primary role is to act as a planned giving department. One of the nuances of a foundation is that it does exist as a separate legal entity. And with the foundation here at the seminary, we also are involved in managing certain assets such as the endowment that covers some of the scholarships that are offered through the seminary. But by and large, from a practical standpoint, it's about offering planned giving services.

Darrell Bock:

Go ahead.

Scott Talbot:

So what is planned giving? That was the next question.

Darrell Bock:

Right, exactly.

Scott Talbot:

Planned giving I like to think of it as a field of financial planning that focuses on people whose value system includes generous giving. In other words, if that's part of your lifestyle, part of your priorities as an individual as a family there are planning opportunities, strategies and tools that are available to you that help you not so much with the where of giving, but the how of giving.

How can I give it a more efficient way? How can I give in a way that maximizes those resources for kingdom use and minimizes taxes and other unnecessary expenses? Sometimes it's a matter of using the same dollars to accomplish two different goals. My charitable giving along with other goals, such as supplemental income for retirement or something along those lines.

Darrell Bock:

So you really do plan out the entire stewardship responsibility that a person has. Isn't just about giving to an organization. It's actually thinking about an entire kind of a financial approach as people think about what they're going to do with the assets that they have.

Scott Talbot:

Yeah. The approach that we would take or what we offer might look different for different people. But typically the work that we do with would be meaningful for somebody who has a relationship with an organization like Dallas Theological Seminary. And they know they love the seminary, they want to give, and they want to start exploring additional ways to give beyond cash. What's interesting is that the average American's net worth is made up of about 9% cash, and about 91% what we call hard assets. And the cash is what we look to for the giving opportunity. When we think about what can I do to help support Dallas Theological Seminary, or the other ministries that God lays on my heart. We look to that 9% and it's a very limited pool of funds from which we can work.

What we can do through planned giving is help people to explore ways in which they can strategically position other assets out of that 91%, not necessarily giving it away, but positioning that in such a way that it can be used for giving purposes while also taking care of your own personal needs. So often it can range from looking at a particular concept or tool, like a charitable gift annuity, or a charitable remainder trust to something more comprehensive like let's sit down and explore our options. Or let's take a look at our estate plan and look at ways to do our giving efficiently so that we're maximizing resources for family and for ministry, and also incorporating spiritual values into the planning process too. So it can be quite varied.

Darrell Bock:

I'm going to assume that someone listening to this may or may not have a financial background to understand some of the categories that you're talking about. So I'm just going to get some definitional stuff out of the way.

Hard assets. Okay, that could sound intimidating. Those can be all kinds of things. Couldn't they? I mean, I think I remember days when back in the early days when I was teaching, when Dr. Walvoord would share that someone gave a car to the seminary and I'm going, well, that's interesting. What are we going to do with a car? That kind of thing. So fill this out. So hard assets, what's the array of possibilities here?

Scott Talbot:

Okay. If you take the cash and liquid assets, that's pretty easy to figure out, the money I had with my checking account, savings account. I can write a check against that today. The hard assets would include things my IRA, my rental property, my home, collections, stock in my brokerage account. And it can even be shares in a privately held company that I'm operating on a regular basis. I can take equity in my business and give it away in a way that does not sacrifice any ownership of that business. So all those assets that we tend to think about as non-liquid, and we often don't consider them for giving purposes. There's a whole lot you can do with that when you start exploring your options.

Darrell Bock:

Interesting. I actually don't know the answer to this question. Is there a minimum that you have to have in order to interact with the foundation?

Scott Talbot:

No minimum.

Darrell Bock:

Okay. So we could be talking to everyday people who say, well, I don't have much in estate. I don't own a business or whatever, but they could come to you and they could help plan so that if they did want to give to the seminary or actually to ministries in general. Because I know the foundation actually works with ministries in general, not just the seminary. They could do that and lay that out and have that be organized in a way that they really wouldn't have to worry about it, it's taken care of by the kind of planning that you engage them in.

Scott Talbot:

Yes. And I'm glad you brought that up because it is a misconception to think that you have to have a large net worth to really sit down and do any kind of planning along these lines. One of my early mentors Ray Line used to tell us anyone with $1 of God's money is a steward. And as stewards we want to plan wisely and make good decisions with regard to the ways in which we use his resources. And so we just come alongside people no matter where they are in life, no matter how large or small their net worth might be just to show them how they can consider options they may not hear from their other advisors to make informed decisions about the ways in which they give.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. Again, I'm going to ask some elementary questions here just in case this is a new area for some people. Difference between an annuity and a trust?

Scott Talbot:

Good question. An annuity, well, let me put it this way. Both an annuity and a trust are ways to make a gift while also receiving income. There are different reasons for looking at these tools, some have to do with simply the idea that I want to keep supporting the organization, but I need income. Maybe I'm now in my retirement years and I can't afford to give away as much, and I need income to help me supplement my other sources of income. An annuity is a very simple and straightforward tool where we handle the administration as an organization. There is no cost that's taken out of it. You would donate a lump sum to the foundation in exchange for a set guaranteed payment, an income for as long as you are living, or if it's a married couple, as long as either husband and wife are living. Again, all the administration we take care of, we invest those funds generate the income, and there's a built-in gift portion for the seminary.

A trust such as a charitable remainder trust is a little more complex. It involves going to an attorney having a trust drafted. We can help with some of the ideas around that and some of the calculations to see how that would work, but you would draft that through an attorney and then have it set up and administered.

We also will act as a trustee of a trust like that in certain cases where you can hire your own trustee to oversee that trust for you, or serve as your own trustee which I don't necessarily recommend. More complexity, but more flexibility. So within that trust, you have the options of how the funds are invested. You have the option of making the charitable beneficiary, not just one, but maybe several organizations. You can even continue with the trust, continue payments not just for the lifetime of husband and wife, but even for up to an additional 20 years if you want to include children or other family members in that income stream. So it's a matter of, do you want the simplicity and the guarantees or are you willing to go to a bit more trouble and costs to set up something that's got greater flexibility to it?

Darrell Bock:

I see. So someone comes in and says I’d like to think about how I'm going to plan my giving and even I take do you also help with the writing of wills and estates, or do you put people in position to do that? Given the fact that the planned giving is designed, I'm assuming not just to be during your lifetime, but after you pass and go to be with the Lord. So do you help with that aspect as well?

Scott Talbot:

We do help with estate planning to a degree. What I to, the way I like to explain it is that we offer another set of eyes to the planning process. We offer ideas that focus on our area of specialty. Namely, how do you want to do your charitable giving alongside your other giving? And how do you want to incorporate your spiritual values into that? How can I practically invite God into the process as I do my planning.

One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that planning is not a one stop shop. It's not a one person kind of thing. In many types of planning, you might need various advisors. It might be an attorney. It might be your CPA. It might be a financial planner. We feel that for those whose value system includes generous giving that having a planned giving officer at the table is also wise. To make another place at the table for that person that can bring to that discussion ideas that the other people will not.

Each person has his own area of expertise, his own area of specialty. We bring something that others don't bring, but we don't do it all either. And so while we speak into the estate planning process, we strongly encourage people to discuss with their other professional advisors, including the attorney what other options they have, additional counsel and the drafting of documents. So they have independent counsel and have objectively thought through their options. And we can recommend people for them if they need recommendations, people that we know in the area.

Darrell Bock:

Okay. One other kind of technical question I'm looping back to the car, just because I thought it was such an odd situation to be in. But what in the world does the seminary do with a car when an asset like that gets passed onto the school? I mean, it seems an odd thing to pass on to the school. Not that people don't drive, but I mean, it just doesn't seem to fit. What happens when part of the assets are actually the possessions that people have that when they're liquidated that comes to the benefit of the seminary?

Scott Talbot:

Good. How best to answer this question? We try to encourage people to, well, at least be aware of the fact that they can donate assets versus just cash.

Sometimes quite often it can be very advantageous for both the giver and the recipient to deal with those assets. Stock is a good example. Real estate is often a good example, business equity. There are other assets which can be considered. They aren't always ideal. They might be collections like my collection of Velvet Elvis paintings, or we've received gifts of gold bullion or silver. One gift when I worked at Campus Crusade for Christ, which actually was very beneficial, was a warehouse full of furniture that this couple received in a legal settlement. And they decided to give it away. And all we needed to do is find a buyer so that we could convert that to cash that the organization could use.

So one of the issues is this gift as we receive it going to provide value for us versus potential liability. Will we be able to easily convert that into cash which the organization can use? Unless there's a situation where we could use that item that's donated we're probably going to want to liquidate that and turn it into cash. Cars are a good example of assets that most organizations are not real eager to take. There are a few that zero in on that. But because you have to turn around and sell them, and often can't make a lot of money in there's a challenge in the process, it is not the ideal asset, other assets can be. So we have a gift acceptance committee that would review certain assets just to make sure it's beneficial for both the giver and the receiver.

Darrell Bock:

Interesting. So I'm going to end kind of this technical discussion part of it with this question. So I come into your office saying, "Hey, I'm interested in doing some planned giving. I really like to benefit to seminary. I've got four or five other organizations I'm also concerned to continue to give to." What does that visit going to look? Or I guess it would be visits?

Scott Talbot:

Whatever you're comfortable with, usually an extended conversation is more easily done face-to-face, but in these days we're using phones and Zoom as well. If I were the one in that conversation, I would basically ask questions. My goal is to find out what it is you want to do, where your heart is, where has God directing you. A little bit of a feel for what your financial situation is, what resources are and what potential challenges you might have? Are you dealing with tax issues? Are you dealing with a potential capital gains tax coming up? Are you looking at selling something property or a business where you're going to take a big hit? And then come up with ideas to share with you that would help you to better achieve the objectives you're looking to achieve while also resolving some of those inefficiency issues like taxes and other things that come into play. So it would be a conversation.

Darrell Bock:

So what kind of a person works in a foundation? I mean, are they CPAs in background or what if someone want to do foundation work? What would it take, what qualifications should they have?

Scott Talbot:

Well, if you're talking about working as a planned giving officer in a role such as this I have found that many planned giving officers come from a few different backgrounds. Some like myself come from a financial planning background. Occasionally you'll run into somebody who has a background as a CPA. Sometimes a law background. There are certain legal issues that we deal with that are helpful to know as a background. Maybe a fundraising background. In my experience, this is what I found. One of the gentlemen that I hired when I was at Campus Crusade for Christ out of 100 people that applied for the position had none of those that we just described. Those are all very helpful. They're often entry points, but he had none of that. He was recommended as one of those standout people that had a wonderful character, integrity, quality individual, loves God, good work practices, just an all-around wonderful person.

And I was encouraged to consider him and I hired him because of the person that he was. And because I knew that the technical aspects could be taught. When I entered the field of planned giving, I came with a background in financial planning, which was helpful, but I was given a lot of intensive training in the area of specifically planned giving because it is a specialty field. So anyone coming in the field is going to need some quite a bit of training to get some of those technical things down. And it's an ongoing thing, but in this particular case it worked out extremely well. This person was a wonderful fit because of who is first. And then the technical part was taught. So does that help with that?

Darrell Bock:

Absolutely. So those are all my technical questions. I'm doing this backwards. We probably should have started with the theological grounding and then come all of these practical questions, but I've flipped the script. So now let's shift in a different direction. You recently and we'll connect this as a resource for people when we air this. You recently had the opportunity to address this Dallas Seminary Chapel on stewardship and kind of the theological grounding for all of this that we're talking about in a very practical way at the start. Share a little bit what you had in mind and why you thought this was an important message particularly for seminary students to hear, because normally you might give that talk to a group of business people. And so talk a little bit about what your heart was in coming to the chapel and talking about stewardship?

Scott Talbot:

Yeah. I could talk about this all day long, so I'll try to keep it as concise as I can. I came into this field, let's call it fundraising. That's how I saw it. That was one of my hesitancies actually thinking of the role of planned giving as a fundraising role, because I didn't have a very positive idea of fundraising at that time. Even though I grew up in a good church, even though I had quite a bit of Bible training, my notion of fundraising really wasn't biblical.

One of the things that I began to learn when I came into the field of planned giving and I referenced his name earlier Ray Line, he challenged me with a question. He was one of the folks that taught me, helped me with the technical as well as the theological part of things. He said, "Now that you're in this field, you need to develop a biblical philosophy of the work that you do."

And I thought to myself, hmm, a biblical philosophy, is there such a thing as a biblical philosophy of giving, of fundraising, let's say. And as he began to prime that pump and share biblical principles with me, my mindset began to shift from the status quo thinking that I wonder if a lot of us even in Christian circles tend to have to a more biblical view. The status quo is that and I've seen this in some of the organizations where I worked at least among certain people. And that is fundraising is a necessary evil. It's something that we do so that the ministry can be done, the real work because ministry needs funding. And so somebody has to raise the money for it. But one of the things that I began to be aware of is that God doesn't need our money.

God who is the creator of everything, and the controller of everything really doesn't need my money. He doesn't need my work. He doesn't need donors to give to the organization because he's God. And so it's not about a need, and it's not about a necessary evil; rather fundraising, if you want to call it that, inviting people in is something that we get to do together. I think God created a scenario in which there is a dependency upon him for the work of the organization, so that people like me and others are required if you will to go invite other people to participate in that. Not because we need them or God needs them, not because God needs their money, but God invites and welcomes and wants our engagement and participation. And so the work of fundraising, rather than being this "oriented, pressure oriented" we must have dollars in the door, becomes a wonderful way to say, this is God's ministry.

God will provide for the ministry, but how is he going to do that? Let's invite people in because God is saying, I want you to do it with me. I want all of you, whoever wants to be part of this, I'm inviting you to participate with me. And so we get to get into the arena. We get to be part of the action with God. We get to have a vested interest by engaging with the resources and dollars in property and whatnot that God has entrusted to us. And so when you begin opening your eyes to that concept, it becomes a very joyful experience and saying, who wants to be part of what God's doing?

Darrell Bock:

So you're really inviting people into our participation in sharing in ministry really. I mean, if I can use the center as an example we put these podcasts together, we issue them. We don't charge for what we do. We put them on the net, they're available to people for free, but it doesn't happen for free.

Not only is it helpful that I get a salary and be able to sustain my life, but you're the same way. And all the staff, the people who you never see on the screen who make it possible, the technical people in the media who take what we do after it's taped and put it in shape so that it can be displayed… the people who work, the internet at the seminary so that there's a place to put it, all those kinds of things. And so there's a sense in which we get to see one another and interact with one another in a seminary department. But none of that happens if there aren't people who participate along side of us and say, I believe in what you're doing. I believe in the ministry that you're engaged in. I want to be there and be supportive of what it is that you do.

Scott Talbot:

And I firmly believe that it's the work of the seminary that's ministry. It's the work of the leader center that's a ministry. It's also a ministry when we invite people in to be part of that.

Darrell Bock:

And so they come in they bring their support. And then in many cases, at least in some cases, they actually get to know us. We get to know them, they interact, they share with us what their concerns are, et cetera. We are always inviting people to say, "Hey, what would you for us to talk about? What is it that you'd like to hear about?" And we'll go out and bring in experts in that area, et cetera. And they can come alongside so that it's not just a monetary gift, but it's a relationship that gets built.

And in the midst of building that relationship then they become a part of who we are. We get to know them, they get to know us. And we really do share in a kind of a strange way, maybe the way not normal way we think about it, in a kind of fellowship of a ministry that works together to really lift up Christ and to serve his people and his kingdom and his church well for the task of the ministry worldwide, as we like to say.

Scott Talbot:

God is a God of relationship that he wants us to be in a relationship with him and with each other.

Darrell Bock:

So tell us what were some of the themes other than participation, what were some of the themes that you developed in this chapel message that you had? And again, explain why it was important for people in ministry to hear what you're saying, because normally you're interacting with people who are out and about in the business world?

Scott Talbot:

Yeah. Well, let's start with the second question. It was interesting for me to note that I had this revelation about a huge part of my life, a huge part of my life, everything financial. After I had been through years of wonderful sermons at really good churches, four years of Bible college, seminary training, very little had really been taught to me about the world of finances.

And then to discover that this arena of my life, that I once thought of as more or less spiritually neutral, there are some guiding principles in the Scripture that I was aware of: debt and savings and what we decided to give to God and some of those other principles. But I thought that everything else was pretty much neutral. And to discover that if we understand God's ownership of all and the concept of stewardship which simply means I am tasked with the idea of managing something that belongs to somebody else, then everything we do with every dollar we have, with every piece of property or resource with which we've been entrusted all of that becomes a spiritual issue.

Whether we give it away, whether we use it to feed our children, whether we use it to purchase something for our own personal needs, it all becomes a spiritual issue. And I wanted to share that with seminary students and seminary professors and seminary staff, because I didn't hear that when I was in seminary, that was missed. There's this huge topic, and it was greatly overlooked. And so that's very valuable for me as I continue to learn more about this concept, and I was hoping it might be of some value to others as they begin to explore for themselves. What does the Bible say about this broad topic?

Darrell Bock:

I'm going to make an analogy. It's almost when you're in a worship service and at some point you pass the plate now with COVID, they're not doing that. They tell you, well, you can give there's a box in the back on the way out, or you can do it electronically or whatever. And it's almost, it's going to sound derogatory, I don't mean it that way, but it's almost a sidebar, a sideshow in everything that's going on. And yet the Bible presents it as part of our worship.

We bring our gifts to God and those gifts enable the ministry to take place, that's been going on since the tabernacle was constructed in the Old Testament and really has lived on ever since. And the way we sustain our life is the same way ministry gets sustained. It takes resources. And so I think it's interesting this kind of sidebar element, which it sounds it was almost your experience and what you were taught and the way it was handled, all of a sudden became, no, this is a part of the way God makes us in a part of what our life is an aspect of what really our spiritual walk and our spiritual life is supposed to be about.

Scott Talbot:

Yeah. It's interesting as you read the Scriptures we have invitations to give, that's very obvious. But when you stop and think about it, if God owns everything, then what does God get when we give something to him? Whether it's we're writing a check and putting in the offering plate, we're giving it to Dallas Theological Seminary. We're supporting another ministry that we know is part of God's heart. What does God really get that he didn't already have in that process, or it doesn't already belong to him? What he gets in that process is an act of worship. It's an act of love because even though it came from God and it still belongs to God, we have to make a hard decision when we relinquish the use of that resource for God's agenda versus solely for my own agenda. And that's where the worship comes in.

Darrell Bock:

And of course the interesting thing is that that's so fundamentally true of almost all the things that we're engaged in our lives. I mean, the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself is taking the arrow and your attention from yourself and pushing it out towards someone else who you're interacting with, the kind of character concern that that represents is an important part of what is going on as well.

Let me shift gears a little bit and ask you this question. What are some of the common, and I actually don't know a good way to ask this question. So I'll just ask it the way it's in my head, which is what are some of the common mistakes people make with resources that hamper their ability to be good stewards?

Scott Talbot:

Well, in the field in which I work, knowing the opportunities what people could do, if they knew about it, if they were aware of their options versus what they actually do. Here are a couple of examples that come to mind. One is selling an appreciated asset and paying a capital gains tax. Now, if you weren't concerned about giving, you may or may not be a believer, you may or may not understand the value of giving. It's not going to matter much to you, but if you are concerned about investing in God's work, if that matters to you, and it should matter to us, then capital gains taxes are optional. What you can do, if you have a highly appreciated asset, whether it's stock, real estate, it can even be a business that you're considering selling at least at some point.

If you sell it you have to pay a tax on the appreciation on that property. If you want to look at a creative way and an efficient way to give giving from appreciated assets is powerful. I'll give you an example. You give appreciated stock two things are going to happen. Number one, you're going to get an income tax deduction based on the fair market value of that stock, just as if you had sold it and donated the cash you get a tax write off. But there's something else you get if you give that stock away before you sold it. When you give it away you give away the capital gains tax liability. It's the person who owns it when it's sold that has to pay that tax. So if you give the stock as a gift to Dallas Theological Seminary, you give away that capital gains tax liability too. All of a sudden you get a double tax benefit.

You've got the income tax deduction. You've also bypassed the capital gains tax. So double whammy. And if you happen to really love that stock, that you just donated to the seminary for its use, you can go and buy it back and have an increased cost basis to reduce the potential capital gains in the future.

So, double tax benefits when giving appreciated assets. I talked to people who have sold parental property. I've talked to people who have sold a business, and it's after the fact and they say, my goodness, if you only knew the capital gains taxes I paid, is there anything I can do about it? And what I want to say is if we could only turn back time and go back before the event, there were options that you would have wanted to hear. It's a little bit late after the fact, although there's some offsetting things, but that's one of the mistakes I see, one of the opportunities that is lost, sometimes just because people aren't aware.

Another is more of a spiritual opportunity lost. Let's look at the idea of estate planning. We tend to think of estate planning as transactional. The status quo thought is with my estate plan, the goal is to get as much as I can to my children as quickly as possible with minimal cost and delay.

That may be a goal, but if that's the only goal it becomes purely transactional. And we've lost a lot of opportunity in that. An estate plan is the last opportunity that we have as an act of stewardship to our God. And while we may be very conscientious about wanting to be generous with our children it's not just about what goes where, it's about what will their resources, which are temporal, due to people who are eternal, it's the impact. What will the impact be? So we try it in the process of looking at wills and estate plans. We try to help people think, not just in terms of transactions, but what are you trying to accomplish? What is the eternal impact that you want to make? How do you want to take temporal resources and use them in a way that makes positive and lasting change in your children, in your family, in the ministries that God has laid on your heart and in the world that you leave behind. And so the value based planning the behind an estate plan that moves beyond just the transaction.

Darrell Bock:

So in that case, you're actually getting people to think about, and I know people who do that, I know very wealthy people who give a very… I'll say it this way, a modest amount to their children, because they're worried about the impact of giving everything to their children. And on the flip side, they say, I have other commitments that I've made all my life that I want to continue to have to see those organizations benefit from. And so it's that balance between caring for your family on the one hand and caring for the ministries that you've developed these relationships with over time.

Scott Talbot:

Yep. And a lot of it is just about having those conversations and thinking through what does make the most sense for us in our family situation.

Darrell Bock:

And do you give advice pastorally about how to have those conversations in relationship to estate planning or is the general pattern to just let the results surprise people when it comes out?

Scott Talbot:

We want to be as helpful as we can to people. And so it's about educating. It's about counseling. It's about teaching and certainly encouraging them to interact with their other advisors. But we want to give them as much information to chew on as they can have. And it goes along with what Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” So we're helping to speak into that and offering them input that will get their minds and hearts hopefully working in the right direction.

Darrell Bock:

So this is a general question, when I do interviews this is always the last question that people ask when they're wrapping up and that is, is there anything I've left out or haven't discussed that you'd like to note for people as we think about the responsibilities of stewardship and what that means?

Scott Talbot:

Well, keeping it brief, I think I'll zero in on one thing. And that is a couple of things about planned giving that make it really interesting. One is most people aren't really knowledgeable about what planned giving is. And so you're taking the time to talk about this today Darrell, I think is very helpful. Some people may have a vague idea, “Oh, you're the people they come to see if they want to name the seminary in their will.” Yeah, we can help you with that. That might be a teeny tiny piece, but it's so much broader than that. For people to understand that we offer a no cost, no obligation service to our people, a ministry to our people just to learn, to be educated, to understand their options and opportunities in a very comfortable relaxed atmosphere.

I don't think of myself as a sales person. And you certainly don't get that feeling around here that anybody is sell you something or there's any kind of pressure. It's just a place to have a good, wholesome, informative, perhaps inspirational conversation about what are my options. What can I think about as I explore ways to better steward the resources that God has entrusted to me. That most of the people, I can't think of any exceptions off hand that people I've had the pleasure of working with over the years walk away in almost every case having learned something new, having gained at least one new opportunity or option that they never knew about and feeling very good about their opportunities. And so that's who we are. That's what we're about. And we love the people we get to work with.

Darrell Bock:

So final question is how do they contact you? If someone's listening to this and they go, "Ooh, that sounds very interesting. I think I'd want to explore the opportunities that that represents." How would they contact you?

Scott Talbot:

Well, they can contact us by email, by telephone. They can stop in at the seminary email address. My email address is [e-mail]. My phone number is, you know what? I don't even have it memorized. I've go look at this.

Darrell Bock:

I have to do the same thing.

Scott Talbot:

214-887-5191, rings directly through to my office. And dallasseminaryfoundation.org is our website.

Darrell Bock:

Okay, well, that sound great.

Scott Talbot:

Where they can get in touch.

Darrell Bock:

Well, Scott I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us on The Table. This has been great. We've chatted about doing this for some time and COVID kind of got in the way, so that's everything else, and it took longer to pull off than we thought about. But I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about giving in general and in the foundation in particular and what that represents and the opportunity of participation in ministry through the use of the responsible and spiritual use of resources. I really do thank you for taking the time with us.

Scott Talbot:

Thank you, Darrell.

Darrell Bock:

And we thank you for joining us on The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon, and we wish you well until the next time we hope that God richly blesses what you're doing and what you're about.

Scott Talbot:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. For more podcasts like this one, visit dts.edu/thetable. Dallas Theological Seminary teach truth, love well.