Stephen Phelan, Chief Pastoral Officer of Movement Mortgage joined David for the Christmas special release of Lykken on Lending to discuss about Movement’s story about loving and valuing their people. He broke it down into three fundamental human need that human heart has to be loved and valued. Please listen and share it with your peers.
The Movement Story – Loving and Valuing People with Stephen Phelan of Movement Mortgage
Listeners we’re in for a real treat will start off by saying Merry Christmas to all of you, so glad that you would take the time to listen to us at Christmas Day. Okay, so maybe you’re not listening to us on Christmas Day, this was recorded actually December 15, releasing it 10 days later on Christmas Day. And we’re grateful for our listeners. Again, one of the things we’re so blessed by you, our listeners. So we pray that you’re just enjoying your Christmas holiday with your family, we hope you listen to this very close. And joining me on the microphone is a dear friend and I can truly say a brother, this guy. He’s a brother from another mother and I just love this guy. He’s got amazing energy levels. He works for an amazing organization that I’m very close to and that’s Movement Mortgage. So Stephen Phelan so good to have you here, brother.
Yeah, Dave, man, it is a joy. I tell you what, I have so much respect for you as a person and the work that you’re doing in our industry. And so this is a great gift for me to be able to spend an hour with you, my friend.
I’m so excited about it. Of course, we honor Casey, because what that whole organization has done in our industry from when he Googled how to start a mortgage company found me. We got him started. And of course, things have taken off and gone to just amazing levels. But it’s such a blessing to still be involved. And one of the things was, I met you as you were contemplating a change. And Casey had a dream of you coming in being a part of providing a service and a value to his organization. And I want to get to that in just a minute. But before we do, let’s start out by letting our listeners find out who you are Stephen. Give me a little background on yourself, and how you got to where you’re at my friend.
Yeah, Dave. So I grew up in Alabama, and was a fan of the Crimson Tide. However, I went to the University of Virginia and that’s where Casey Crawford and I began a 30 year friendship because I was trying to guard him on the football field as a strong safety. He was a tight end and Dave, his arms are a bit longer than mine. So I just began really holding on to his jersey getting a lot of flags. And actually I’ve never stopped hold on him as a friend since then. And that began a really special friendship also went to law school at UVA.
Before we go to your Law school, which one is the better football player? You or Casey?
Dave, I guess the NFL answered that question definitively for him. He went to the NFL, I did not
You want to get a Law degree. So that indicates that we could tease him and say you’re a little smarter, but pretty smart guy. But anyway, so you went on and got a law degree then.
I got a Law degree at UVA, got a theology degree at RTS. And then we were in Southern California, starting churches and planning churches for 13 years, until I got a phone call from my best friend Casey, that changed my life. And that was back in early 2008. And Casey called me and he said, Hey, man, would you be willing to pray with me about something? And he said, I really think that God might be calling me to start a mortgage company. And I said, “No, man, I don’t need to pray about that.” It’s just a bad idea. You need to turn on the TV or get out or something. But man, the world is blowing up because of that industry right now. He says, Yeah, no, I know. He said, the problem with that is that the whole industry was built around greed. And it was preying upon neighbors for personal gain, through lending, etc. And he said, I want to build something that’s about fundamentally loving your neighbor, rather than preying upon your neighbor. And so I said, Yeah, man, I’ll pray about that. And so he really had a conviction, Dave, to start a different type of company. A company that is fundamentally built around loving and valuing your neighbor. And that is what Movement Mortgage was built to do in the middle of one of the worst mortgage economies until the recent years. And so that’s what we’ve set out to do is how do we really love and value our neighbors love and value our teammates? That’s what we’re about.
Yeah, and you came on staff as the Chief Pastoral Officer, I want to put something in here now. We’re talking pastor, we’re talking about praying, folks, this is Christmas. If you can handle a little bit of what you might say, is evangelical religion here. I apologize. We’re releasing this on Christmas, I do ask you and challenge you those that are saying, You know what, I don’t have time for this. And that’s not my thing. I respect you guys doing that. And I understand that. But I want to ask you to listen all the way through, you may not do it in a construct of a faith, but you have a heart. Anyone who owns a business and running a business, you can’t be a business successfully without having a heart for people. You can’t be I challenge anybody who owns a business starts a business. You’ve got to have a heart for people or you’re going to fail. So if you don’t listen, you’d say kick out the religious stuff that you are going to be hearing and talking about If you want, that’s fine, I don’t I wish you wouldn’t know that you should listen to it. But listen to this, about what is being done at Movement Mortgage, and the other companies Casey has now bought and is going across the board. So I just want to put a little encouragement. I know some people listen to the podcast regularly might be turned off by that, I’m gonna challenge you to listen all the way through, because what they’re doing here can be implemented at every company, regardless of their religious affiliation or not. So I just want to put that out there and challenge everyone on that theme and thanks for letting me interrupt you there with that. So you’re the Chief Pastoral Officer at Movement Mortgage. Now you’re also this aimed at Ron Blue Trust Sovereign and all of the Movement affiliates. Talk a little bit about what’s beyond movement there, who’s Ron Blue, and all the movement affiliates just real briefly touched on that?
Yeah, Dave’s actually, it goes back to the phone call that changed my life in 2008. From Casey, one of the things he told me there was, he said, Man, I really believe that this company’s got to be fundamentally different, and actually feel like God’s calling on my life to start a company that really isn’t about me. This not about just building up my own personal wealth, but really is about loving neighbors and giving the whole thing away, so that we can love the most marginalized in the world. And I remember telling him back then Dave, I said, Man case, I really feel like you’ve heard from God on this. And we’ve got to live into that. And I’m going to hold you to that for the rest of your life. And Casey had a friend of his by the name of John Casey, the NFL challenged him and ask him a question up front, Dave, that really would be good for any listener on this call to think about, which is this how much is enough? Yeah, how much money is enough. And so what Casey did so courageous, actually, really wise, was he said a number, this is before the company even began, he set a number and said, This is going to allow me to live at the same level I’m at right now and to live, kept my income and stay here and give all of it away, above that. It was God would do man, he allowed Casey and Movement to grow. And it’s now we’ve seen over 5,000 teammates be a part of it, it’s in every state, and case you reach that number Dave in year two. So everything else is being given away to the kingdom of God, and to love the most marginalized, the most vulnerable in the world. And now that includes we’ve purchased Ronald Blue Trust, it includes our partnership with Sovereign Capital. And so that is extended to taking this model of loving God and loving your neighbor. And taking that and really wanting to see a faith driven approach to business take off to bring an incredible hope for the most marginalized and vulnerable in the world.
Wow, it is an amazing vision. And I remember, as I said earlier in the intro, Casey Googled how to start a mortgage company. So I was there at the beginning along with you. But you joined him as a Pastoral Officer some years later, and what brought that about the company grew, and there’s a need that Casey saw, which is why he reached out and head you literally joined the staff. You are one of the C suite executives on the company?
Yeah Dave, I think a couple things happen. One on my end, as a pastor of a local church, I just recognize that America is moving in a direction that’s increasingly more secular by the day, and people are really going to local churches less and less, where they go is they go to work, and they go to work. So I wanted to be a part of really loving people where they are rather than asking them to come to me on a Sunday morning. And I just figured how can we really be what the church is supposed to be, and really go to where people are, and just love them where they are, and to see a movement of God’s love in the marketplace happen. And so I think that was a big part of it. I think another thing that happened, Dave was it Casey gave me another call. And that was the second call from him that changed my life. And he and I were talking one day, and he said, Hey, man, do you think can really live into God’s vision to really best love those in the marketplace with eternity in mind? He said, you think I can do that better as a CEO of a mortgage company, or you as a pastor, and I’m like, I got that all day. Love with eternity in mind, couple of men, that’s what we do. That’s my thing. But he asked me, he said, How many people how many hours a week? Do you have your people? And I said, one on Sunday morning and two in a community group and maybe three if they serve, he said, I’ve got mine at 40, I get 40 hours to love my people. Like you only get two or three. And he said, “Hold on”. He said, “Don’t you ask them to write you a check and pay you?” I said to your tithing, he said, I pay mine. They’re paid to be there. And so I’ve got a ready audience who is waiting to be loved with eternity in mind. And man, we just thought golly, what an incredible opportunity to go to people where they are their defenses are down. They’re not like all guard up and they just want to be loved and valued like every human longs to be. And so Dave, what we’ve done is we have built a model that is fundamentally about loving your neighbor. It starts with your teammates, you love your teammates first. And if you love your teammates really well, guess what? You’ll have some customers. And then if you love your customers really well, guess what, you have some profit, and you can take that profit and love marginalized communities. And so for us, David began in that order, how do we love our teammates and value our teammates in such a way that they’ve never been loved. They’ve never been valued like that. And what we did Dave is we identified three fundamental human needs that the human heart has that every seen walking into every office on this call, your teammates have a desire to be loved, and valued. And so we found three ways to love that are across every industry, every sector, and regardless of how big or small your company is, whether you have five people, or 5000, these principles of love, they play out. And so that’s the model Dave.
The one word that were there, it’s universal, it’s not a need for someone for Americans are the it is universal, employed, unemployed, a senior executive, or the one working at the lowest levels in the organization. It’s a universal need. And I’m really excited about getting into how you’re doing that. So let’s cover universal need Number one, what is it?
Yeah, the first need that we all have, Dave is when we are in crisis, we need help, like everyone who is in a crisis, and look, all of us are either in one way.
Or the mortgage industry right now. There are a whole industries and it feels like it here.
So we’re all going to be in crisis at one point or the other. And none of us want to go through that alone. We want help when we’re in a crisis. And so when we were small Dave, we first found out about this knee just from our teammates that we knew and, and in fact, one of our teammates that we’ll call Maria, Maria came to us and said, Hey, guys, I was wondering if I could work remote on Thursday and Friday. And we, May, who was feeling at the time said, What are you talking about? And this was way before remote was a thing. This isn’t like, 08-09. And so she said, I don’t have enough money to put gas in my car. And so if I could just work remote on Thursday and Friday, she said paydays Monday, and I think I’ll be good. And so May goes to Casey and says, Casey, what do you think about this? And Casey said, If she can’t put gas in her car, then I doubt she can put groceries in her fridge. So let’s do both. So we gassed up her car, put groceries in her fridge, and then was born love works. Love does. Love is a verb. So we said, Gosh, there’s so many other teammates, that when they’re in crisis, we want them to know Movements coming, you’re not going to be alone. And so as we grew Dave, we had to figure out how to scale love. And so what we did is Casey seated a Love Works fund that by the way, we ripped off from Joel Manby called him with his permission. He wrote the book, and Joel said, yeah, man, take it run with it. We’re gonna name the fund after he said, Great. And so Casey seeded the fund with $100,000 gift.
Yeah, I think Toby joined him to Toby, which is the co founder there with Casey, each of them put up $100,000. Casey, how would you like to get a call for your partner? Hey, what are you doing? I want to challenge you willing to put up 100,000 With pucker factor for the average person. But knowing Toby as well as we do, I love that brother. And Casey funded this. But what’s so interesting about this is the business part of this, after that the thing has been totally self funding. And I want to get into that, but I want to go through the three needs recovered one of them want to cut the other two, and then we’re gonna talk about the structure of this, how can people set this up? We’ll save that to the end. All right, so continuing on, so you helped Maria through a crisis, but gas in her car groceries in her refrigerator. And then that started solving a need, she can come to work meet the needs. And then there’s another aspect of it. And you’ve done this over and over. And is there any other stories of crisis? Where you’ve helped people that just stand out before we move on to the second need? What are some other examples? Yeah, no, there are hundreds and hundreds of them.
Yes, sure. Dave, we had a particular tragedy at one of our schools, this is something we’ll get into but one of our passions for loving marginalized communities is that we’re starting schools in communities and in one of those schools, one of our scholars was struck in the head by a drive by shooting.
While she was sleeping in her bed in her home, if I recall correctly.
What was so powerful was that through the love works fund that we set up, our community rallied and it was actually the third altercation that this family Mary had been through and so our team rallied and got her immediately to a safer location that is her family while she was in the hospital. So we were able to help see them get into a much safer living condition, and then rally around the family to support. And that’s a layer out Dave, even from our Movement scholars were able to even help their families. So it’s just an incredible thing where people feel like they’re in crisis. And oh, my goodness Movement is coming to love me if you’re a part of the Movement team Movement is coming.
Yeah,I remember when Casey started, the company started out as New American Funding. And I love that name new American, and he’s such an All American guy. So I thought, What a great name. And he called me one day says, we’re changing the name of the company to movement. I got movement. Why don’t you tell him I said, don’t look at, we’re creating a movement. And I didn’t understand the depth of that vision at that time. But he rebranded the company and you certainly have done that you made a difference. you made a difference in this girl’s family, who was sleeping in her home, a bullet came through as a drive by shooting shot through the house went into her, what a tragedy to wake up to. But how you guys responded, You said we don’t live in those kind of neighbors, but their crisis is all around us every day. The fact is that you have created a fund, and you’ve created a movement, and an awareness that you can make a difference in people in crisis. But sometimes it’s not crisis, sometimes, which is getting to the next one. And I’m really excited about the ending there is some people just need to have a friend talk about the second need.
Yeah, Dave. So the first need is everyone needs help in crisis. The second need is, everyone wants a friend at work. This is so basic, Dave, but if you study Gallup polls from the last 10 years, the common denominator that you’ll find is when people say I love my job, you couldn’t pay me enough to leave here. I love this place. I’m sticking what creates a retention and stickiness at work. It’s really simple. You have a friend who loves you. And my background is the church world Dave and in church, whether you’re a church of five or 5000, how do you create friendships? How do you create stickiness is through small groups. And so what we said is we’re going to develop a small group system at work for people to be known in a group of five to seven, because in a company of 5000, you just can’t know everybody, you can’t love everybody and everybody, but in a group of five to seven, you can. and so we created a mentoring process, which is a small group process of groups of five to eight that can meet virtually all over the country. These don’t have to be in person. And we’ve created a process for people to be loved and valued at work. Now, Dave, there’s a story as to why this started. And the reason how we got here, there’s a business case and there’s a theological case, I’ll start with the business case, the business case is this. We had a guy who came to us one of our top leaders. And he said, Guys, I’m leaving, we said, why is that? He said, I got an offer to triple my salary. And we said, That’s it. That’s the only reason. And David just so happened, we knew who was going to work for it. It was a really rough guy who had done some pretty nasty things to a couple of our team members. And we knew it. And so we cement don’t go it’s a train wreck of a decision. And now they’re triple my salary. And so Casey said, Look, I got bad news. I got good news, which one you want? He said, I guess the bad news. He said the bad news, it’s a terrible decision. Don’t go. He said, what’s the good news? He said, The good news is he says we’re going to start a mentoring program with your name on it, we’re not going to have this happen again, because he said, This is our fault. We haven’t loved our people well, and equip them to make decisions around calling like what is your calling in life. And so we wanted to really pour into our people, and help them make huge decisions in life, help them grow as parents help them grow in their marriages. And so we created a process to help our teammates become better parents, become better husbands and wives, grow professionally. And that process is called Movement Mortgage. We have Movement mentoring, sorry about that. We have four different tracks. Dave, of the mentoring process, we have a faith and life track for those who want to explore how they can grow spiritually as parents as well as all that together and how faith speaks into that. We have a leadership development track that John Maxwell has helped us develop, we have a life planning track and we have a grab the key track that day grab the key is what we’re doing is we are helping those in our industry, who right now are dealing with access issues to homeownership. So whites who own homes, it’s 79%, blacks own homes at 46%, Latinos at 49. So we wanted to step into that felt called to and to see that change. And so we have created a mentoring process out of a seven week small group of five to eight people to help those communities tear down the access gap that’s there. And so now we’re helping people step into generational wealth through homeownership in the black community and Latino community, and they can also consider eternal wealth if they want to, in one of these mentoring groups. And so they through that mentoring process, we have now equipped 3500 of our teammates, just in movement. We have now given it to over 18,000 people in the marketplace, businesses all over the country, every industry, every sector, is taking a part of this Movement mentoring, to see a movement of small groups, that really helps people develop vulnerable friendships, intentional friendships at work, which their heart is longing for, and to be loved and valued at work.
That is so outstanding. And I am a part of C12, as you’ve been very active in speaking to the organization, and I had a number of C12 executives, that’s all CEOs that are part of a roundtable group and we get together once a month talking about our businesses and what’s going on our lives. And we had our annual convention, and you spoke at that annual convention, and I drag as many of these guys to come and listen to you. And they got so inspired to set up their own Movement, mentoring programs inside of their company. Again, it’s a movement to mentor. It’s not moving mortgages, better program, but it’s based on that what you’re doing there. These guys have all set these up and that’s having transformative impact on the lives of the people. But it’s having that ancillary side benefit where people go, I feel loved and valued at this company. I know that there’s a crisis of my life, I’ve got somebody that’ll help me out, or at least have a shot at it. And then now I have a friend and I feel being mentored and they’re helping me through these achieve the goals and desires. It keeps people in their seats working away. Go ahead and decide about this stuff.
Let me introduce you to a story. A guy named Zack I think it’ll come to life when you hear about Zack came to work with us. And he was going through a lot of the same, all of us have our own different addiction issues. They just have different names on him Zack like anyone else had his own. And so dealing with some addiction issues, and some struggles at home. And we have gotten to watch Zack’s marriage, his family transformed, overcoming addiction. And he would say, man, he has actually developed his faith, he’s come to a living faith that has given him life in Christ, holistic change spiritually, emotionally, physically, marriage wise. And now Dave, Zack is so fired up about Movement mentoring, that he has a goal for 2024. And guess what it is to bring 50 of our teammates into movement mentoring this year. He says, “My life has been so transformed by this process, I’m going to bring 50 of our teammates into the mentoring process, because I know it’ll change their life too.”
So how many mentoring groups do you have just in Movement Mortgage alone.
Today, we’ve had let’s see around 3500 of our teammates, who are a part of it, just at Movement, which is it’s just an amazing things have been because people are longing for intentional friendships. And if you happen to be a follower of Jesus, there’s another reason that you do this Jesus, in this thing called the Great Commission, he said, man, go and make disciples. And that’s so good, really all it is from a faith perspective. But there’s also this incredibly strong business case. So it’s really both.
Yeah, it’s really good, which really gets to the third universal longing that every human has. And I want you to talk about that purpose.
Yeah, Dave, so everyone wants help in crisis. Everyone wants a friend at work. And here’s the third thing. Everyone wants a life of purpose. Like unequivocally, the human heart, longs for purpose. We longed to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to live a life of significance, not just success. John Maxwell talks a lot about the human desire to move beyond success to significance that of life about others. And Dave, what we’re doing is we are helping our teammates build a life of purpose. And here’s the way that happens. Jesus said, this way, you’re more blessed when you give them when you receive. And so if you get people developing their generosity muscles, really exercising generosity and giving their life away, especially to the most marginalized and the most vulnerable in the world, they will find that they are building a life of purpose. So the most significant thing we’re doing, Dave is right here. We come to our teammates, and we say, hey, we want you to come with this to Guatemala, or El Salvador. And we want you to serve and love the most vulnerable kids in Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Africa. And when people do that, their life is transformed. Now, Dave, Casey would say this, and he said it often. We have paid the best of the best to come into Movement to do leadership development. We’ve paid millions of dollars and we’ll keep doing it but the single best thing we do for Leadership Development is get somebody to get on a plane and go on a vision trip with us. We’re expanding their vision for a purpose driven life. And so, Dave, we’ve now taken over 60 trips at Movement, just alone, we do about one a month. And we are now we develop the infrastructure, I just hired someone and we are serving businesses all over the country who were saying, hey, come with us, we get it that you may not have the partners overseas, develop all the travel logistics, the safety, all that. So we’ve done that, we’ve done all that we’ve hired it out, we’ve got it, and just come with us. All you need to do if you want to develop your people, and see them live a life of purpose, and do leadership development, just say, hey, Stephen Phelan at Movement, I want to go with you. I want to take my team with you to serve the most vulnerable in Guatemala, or wherever it is, and watch what happens in your company. And through the leadership development that happens, the relationships will absolutely be transformed. But Dave, here’s something that’s critical to that process. When people come back, they are so fired up. They’re just like, Oh, my goodness, if you were only with me, in Africa, when we were there, man, it just changed my life. But a lot of times they come back and they go, now I gotta go back to work. And we say now you get to go back to work. But here’s the thing, we’re going to put you in a mentoring group, a small group of five to eight people, maybe some that you went on a trip with, and we’re going to work out what you learned about purpose. Over in Africa. We’re going to work it out here in Charlotte and Toledo and Tulsa and all the cities across the US. And we’re going to live a life of purpose here going to serve the rescue mission serving in our work, what does it mean to develop purpose at work? And when we can pair the mentoring groups with the vision trips. Oh, it is transformational.
So exciting. I remember one of the stories Casey told me says you got to hear the story. We got this dude who is tattooed up, he’s got tattoos. He’s a biker dude, man, he is a badass kind of guy. He’s one of these guys that just rough tough, and is about a far away And he probably never darken the door of a church or anything like this. So he got talked into going on one of these vision trips and Casey tells a story. So well. He says Be an add on to your instruction, a sentence without an F bomb in there. And he said, so we talked him into coming, he came, this big tough guy was in the middle of all these kids running around and hanging off him. It changed the man’s heart. It gave him a purpose. And he’s gone back down and built his own orphanages or done similar things in their schools or whatever. He’s done this on his own because it transformed his life.
What Mike Brennan figured out who’s now the president of our company. What Mike figured out on these vision trips, is that a little girl who’s eight years old, in Guatemala, is actually our neighbor. And we’re called to love her. And he saw the things that a little girl who’s going through things that no little girl should ever have to go through. And he started weeping. And this little girl got a hold of Mike Brennan his heart.
It was Brennan? Casey talking about Brennan.
Mike Brennan, He has now been back to over 15 vision trips, he is so passionate about taking teammates, because he sees what happened in his own heart and the hearts of our teammates as we go. And it’s the power of a little girl who’s eight years old, and Guatemala who becomes your neighbor to love. And you have a purpose that is so much bigger than yourselves. And so that’s why we want to invite everybody on the call to say, hey, come with us. Just come with us.
I want to make sure that said everyone that other mortgage companies are listening, this is not a recruiting trip. It’s a vision trip to make a difference, or purpose. It’s not a recruiting trip for Movement Mortgage. And let’s be really clear about that. And that is not the deal here.
And the other thing I would say the other thing we’re doing to develop a life of purpose. We want people to have a global purpose, but also a local purpose. And so when they come back, how can we help our teammates, love our teammates, develop those generosity, muscles live a life of generosity, it’s more blessed to give than receive. So one of the things we’re doing David, we’ve seen bear a lot of fruit is matched giving. So we created a foundation. When they give, they come to life, given their time, talents and treasures. And so if they give $1 to a nonprofit, we match it dollar for dollars, and they get excited about giving. And if they give up their time, Dave, we then pay him 20 bucks an hour but not to them. We paid 20 bucks an hour to the organization where they’re serving. And so over time, Dave, we’ve matched $173,000 and mass giving for their time, and we’ve matched over 6.1 million in giving to organizations that they give and so it doubles their impact. It doubles their sense of purpose. And so those are some ways we’re trying to create local purpose, those generosity muscles along with the global purpose of coming with us on a vision trip,
That’s so exciting. I love this. So let’s get to those that are saying, Man, this is sounds great. I want to get involved in the vision trip. I want to do all this. But how can I set this up for my company? How can someone set up the love works program? Yeah, their program and their coaching?
Let’s go through each one of these three, how can you do each one of the three, the easiest way for a life of purpose that we just mentioned, is come with us on a vision trip, they like that one’s just really simple. Just call me and give me a week that works on your calendar. And we’ll go together. So that one’s super simple. If you’re interested in the giving, and how we’re doing that, we can help you with that as well. All the things we’ve learned. But let’s talk about how you develop helping crisis, the love works fund if you really wanted to do that. How do you do it? Okay, so let’s go back to when Toby and Casey had the courage, and the generosity to seed this fund with $100,000. Now, your context, your seating at may be $1,000, depending on scope and scale. But what we did is we then said, Alright, let’s cast a vision to our teammates, for building a community that shows up in crisis and loves in crisis and provides help in crisis because honestly, Dave, that’s the community that we all want to be a part of, when you fall, you don’t want to just smack the concrete, you want a safety net that’s under you. And so how do we create a safety net in all of our communities, because we all need it. So Dave, this is not a fun for poor people. This is a fun for people in crisis, which is all of us. And so you cast a vision for your teammates to say, this is the kind of community that we all want to build together. And here’s how you do it, we are going to give you the option to make a payroll deduction that will be pre tax. So you can lower your tax basis, you can make it a donation that is going to create systemic transformational change for your teammates, and for you if you need it. And you can do it $1 a month, $3 a month $5 doesn’t matter. And so Dave, we’ve had over anywhere between 50 to 71% of our teammates buy in and say I want to create that kind of community. Wow, what that has done, has grown our love works fund to the place where we have now helped just in our company, over 2500 people for over $5 million. And Dave, that’s when cancer strikes, and you have no idea how the bills stacked up, and you’re gonna step into them. And so, Dave, we’ve helped companies all over the country, they may be 10 people, or we now just had our friends from a little company that you may have heard of called Hobby Lobby come and spend some time with and our friends at Hobby Lobby man, we’ve learned so much from them. But this is one thing they said we want to do this love works thing, and we’re going to do it and so now they get this after the visit a press Go 57,000 families at Hobby Lobby are now experiencing help in crisis. Love and mercy in a crisis, because they said we’re gonna build that community too, that’s the kind of community we all want to be part of. And so we have had the privilege of walking with our friends at Hobby Lobby to help to help set that up. And we would love to help any listener on this call. Go man, let’s do that. Let’s build a movement of love and mercy in crisis. And man if you want to do that, we would love to help you do that.
That is a such a great story. And that once it was originally seeded by Toby and Casey each giving 100,000 That was the last I put in this has been I want to stress this is being totally funded from within the staff, the employees of Movement Mortgage folks, and they’ve given away over $5 million. And there’s a good fund. In fact, you’ve got this has grown to the point where you have a whole staff that administers this, that looks at the needs. So it’s not one of those, the most popular person gets it, or the greatest need or the one that can create it, it’s really been set up in a way that is administered in just the classiest, high quality way.
Let me address that because we get so many questions on this. So remember, we started doing this for Maria, when we were just a few people, and we didn’t have anybody on staff. It wasn’t hired out. It was very organic. Dave, we want to help in a way that doesn’t hurt. There’s a book out there called when helping hurts. And we now have three trained social workers who are helping in a way that helps in trying not to help in a way that hurts because we recognize there’s some people that land in a crisis over and over and over and over again. How can we help with that? So we’re trying to get proactive and not just reactive. And so we’ve added pieces that we can help you with in terms of budgeting financially, how you think about counseling, what that looks like. So we’ve added pieces, but again, Dave, we can help you think about the structure of it. Like, for instance, is there a cap on how much you give? We’ve had to think through all those questions. How do you set it up structure wise? Do you do it internally or externally, we can walk you through that based on size. So I would say, look, whatever size you’re at, man commit to helping in crisis, shoot us an email. And we would love to come alongside you in this because we just know, the world is better, when more companies are loving people this way.
And that’s the part that is so important that people understand you like how do I get started, I love these stories, I love to make a difference. It’s like buying a cookbook, you don’t have to come up with a recipe folks. Movement has already created the recipe, it’s a open the book and start following it. And best part is Stephen will even come and give speak into it. There’s a team there, I’ve turned other companies on to you, Stephen, and you have someone that’s on staff at no cost, has helped other companies set up this program. And it’s been invaluable that the CEOs that I’ve talked to that have stepped up and say that they want to do this for their people. And their team has said it was invaluable. And they were just amazed at how generous you were with your time. You and your team were generous with your time and helping them and the resources that you already have created. It’s just add water mix and bake. Do it.
Yeah, yeah. And that gets us Dave, to the last thing of how do we start this mentoring process if we want to do it. So, man, if you want to help your people have friendships at work, then here’s the most significant thing you do start a group like one group, you don’t have to say, hey, we’re gonna put all 500 of our teammates into the mentoring process, and we’re gonna have 50 groups in your one, then I felt like just start one group. And we’ll help you get up and running, we’ll train you on how to facilitate the group and four different tracks. What we do is we train facilitators from companies all across the country, and you can figure out what was going to best help serve and love your people, whether it’s leadership development track, the life planning track, the grab the key track, or the Faith and Life Track. And so we can help your culture, develop a mentoring culture there. And really what it’ll be Dave is leadership runs downhill. And so what we’ve done is start with a group of influencers at the top. And they didn’t experience the power of transformation of friendships at work, where your where your relationships at work, go to a whole another level that you never envisioned was even possible because it moves beyond the whole aspect of transactional to relational data. It’s no longer just hey, man, can you get me the loan documents? It’s, hey, tell me about your kids. I know you mentioned last week in our mentoring group that they’re in the hospital. And man, I’m thinking about you, I’m praying for you tell me how that is. They’ve when you start with love in a relationship, the transactional follows the relational. But if you flip that, and it’s only transactional, then what will happen is you’ll churn and burn your people, and they’ll get chewed up and spit out. And so when you leave with love, and relationship, the transactional excellence follows so much with such the greater sense of smoothness and efficiency and passion. Because people know they’re loved. Love, it’s not even wrong.
And this is so good. And we’re sharing on Christmas, the ‘Tis the season to be giving. And this is just a way people can follow it. Listeners, I hope you have been inspired by this. And challenged by this. The best part is you can get a hold of Steve and he’s gonna share his contact information with you just a minute, you can get a hold of them and just follow their excellent example. I encourage you to do this so much, Stephen, thank you so much for investing nearly an hour here with me just to cover this and then how can people reach you? They can learn more and consider setting this up anyone with their company?
Yes. So my email is probably the best way [email protected]. Let me spell that for you [email protected]. And truly it would be such an honor to hear from one of Dave Lykken’s friends. Dave is just such a friend of ours. And Dave, we’ve always wanted to build something special together. And we’ve been doing that for years together. And so to be able to team up with some of your friends and listeners all over the country, and to build a movement of love that sweeping through the marketplace and seeing people loved and valued in ways they never have done before. That’s what gets us out of the bed every day. That’s why we’re motivated and we want to join with you and the businesses out there to say let’s build a different world a new world foundationally built upon loving and valued. And so we want to team up with people who want to see that dream become a reality.
I’m excited to be partnered with you from the very beginning and seeing and continue to partner and encouraging us. It gives so much purpose to what we’re doing and I’m just blessed to have you here Merry Christmas to you and your family and to the movement family. We love and value you guys appreciate you so much. You too buddy. Love you day great being with you. Love it. Good to see you brother.
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Stephen grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, then went to school at the University of Virginia, where he was an Academic All-American on the football team as a starting strong safety; then earned a law degree from the University of Virginia, and added a Master of Divinity degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. After seminary, God called Stephen to San Diego, where he planted a church in the inner-city and helped lead a multi-site, multi-congregational church with 8 campuses in San Diego committed to planting churches that are for the city. Stephen is currently the Chief Pastoral Officer of Movement Mortgage, Ronald Blue Trust, Sovereigns Capital, and all of the Movement affiliates, where he communicates the unfailing love of Jesus Christ, provides visionary leadership, leads people into a life-giving relationship with Jesus, and is igniting a mentoring movement to help awaken the Church in the business community. Stephen is helping catalyze a movement of God’s love in the marketplace by coaching and consulting other businesses that want to lead from a faith-driven perspective.