November 6

Episode 1370: Interview with Bill Yoh Author of Unvarnished Faith

Inspired Stewardship Podcast, Interview

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Join us today for the Interview with Bill Yoh, author of Unvarnished Faith...

This is the interview I had with speaker, theologian, and author Bill Yoh.  

In today’s podcast episode I interview Bill Yoh.  I ask Bill to share with you the story of his faith and writing Unvarnished faith.  I also ask Bill about why, as Christians, we often stray from the core tenets of faith.  Bill also talks with you about why we often confuse striving for unity with uniformity.

Join in on the Chat below.

Episode 1370: Interview with Bill Yoh Author of Unvarnished Faith

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1370 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Bill Yoh: I'm Bill Yoh. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find the key tenets of faith and a relationship with God are key.

[00:00:24] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott

[00:00:32] Maderer.

[00:00:37] So, you know, I think about what comes to mind, right? Uniformity is, you know, as you said, it's not all of us thinking alike. It's actually everybody thinking like me. That's kind of what I'm looking for, right? That's that uniformity thing. But, but we weren't created to be uniform. God, God created each one of us in God's infinitely faceted image.

[00:00:56] And by design, we are all created different from each other. Not one of [00:01:00] us is the same.

[00:01:01] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling.

[00:01:16] In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's podcast episode, I interview Bill Yeo. I asked Bill to share with you the story of his faith and the story of writing Unvarnished Faith, his new book. I also asked Bill about why, as Christians, we often stray from the core tenets of faith. And Bill also talks with you about why we often confuse striving for unity with striving for uniformity.

[00:01:56] I've got a new book coming out. called Inspired [00:02:00] Living, assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over at InspiredStewardship. com Inspired Living.

[00:02:14] That's InspiredStewardship. com Inspired Living. Bill Yeo is an award winning and best selling author, keynote speaker, business owner, and faith leader. Committed to the adage that the truly educated never graduate, he has earned master's degrees in business administration and in ministry and theology.

[00:02:34] Bill engages in service work in his local communities and abroad, employing and sharing the blessings of his talents, gifts, and resources. He lives with his family and their many pets in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Bill's latest book is Unvarnished Faith, Learning to Love with a Servant's Heart. Welcome to the show,

[00:02:52] Bill Yoh: Bill!

[00:02:54] Thanks, Scott. It's awesome to be here.

[00:02:56] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. I look forward to our conversation this morning.[00:03:00] I shared a little bit in the intro about some of the work you've done and how you recently put out this book Unvarnished Faith, but can you talk a little bit about more about your journey and why is this the book that you're trying to put out into the world

[00:03:19] Bill Yoh: right now?

[00:03:21] Thanks for opening that opening with that. And thanks again for the chance to be in conversation with you. So I like a lot of people, I've been a person of faith my whole life. I was raised in a mainline Protestant tradition of the Episcopalian church. And, but I'd say my faith life was one part of my life and I had my business life and my personal life and my love life and my family life and my all those kinds of things.

[00:03:46] A lot of that really, or all of that pivoted in 2015 when my mom passed and losing a parent as, as sadly, but inevitably everybody will was very sad for losing my mom, but it was also very [00:04:00] beautiful and it was beautiful because there was this beautiful sunset at the time she passed.

[00:04:05] I was holding her hand the moment she went to be with God and we knew when her suffering ended. But on top of that, for me personally, it was beautiful because God literally pushed on me in that moment, like physically pushed on my chest. And I didn't have the words or the ability to describe what was going on.

[00:04:22] But with some hindsight, now I can say, God was telling me, pal, you got to change some things and start heading in a different direction. You're not living into the person I created you to be. And so instead of my faith life being one of those parts of my life, it really became the central focus and the lens through which I try to see all of my life.

[00:04:40] A couple months later I'm pulling back from most of my 25 year career and I'm looking to do writing and other things. A couple months later, small group, a couple months later, mission work. Next thing I know I'm back in school for a master's in ministry and theology and I'm writing and ultimately publishing a book on a mission trip that's called Unvarnished [00:05:00] Faith.

[00:05:00] So it's been a pretty crazy but exciting journey over these last several years and I'm still right in the middle of it and excited to see what God has for me next.

[00:05:12] Scott Maderer: If you had to sum up the book for somebody and tell them what it's about or who should read it or that kind of thing what would you describe

[00:05:20] Bill Yoh: the book as?

[00:05:21] Sure. The book is ultimately about the centrality of love and relationships and the importance of love and relationships in our lives. I use the experience of being a developed world privileged North American traveling to a place like Nicaragua very underdeveloped, very austere different from me in every way imaginable in terms of my experience, my background, even any vacationing I'd done to similar kinds of places, doing mission work in a place like that was.

[00:05:47] nothing in my life prepared me for it. So for as different as it was, what really came very clear to me during this trip, and it was a through with a food ministry that my brother Jeff and his wife Suzanne run called Servants with a Heart[00:06:00] was how unbelievably connected I was with other children of God, with other human beings.

[00:06:08] through the power of faith and through the connection of love that we have that God imbued in us and how much relationships with people can happen across language divides, across barriers, around cultural divides, all those kinds of things. And just that power of faith and stripping away, if you will, all the varnish and all the dogma and all the doctrine that different denominations and geographies and things put on our faith.

[00:06:33] If we strip that away and really focus down to What life is about love and life's about relationships. And that's what fuels us during our earthly ministry. That's what I'm trying to impart. I'm trying to do it in a way where it's written in a very readable way and it's relatable and it can help you make people think and feel a little more.

[00:06:53] Scott Maderer: So you mentioned you had grown up in a faith tradition. You had been a person of faith, but it just [00:07:00] been a component of your life, not a focus of your life. How do you think your faith journey affected? what you're putting out what was the intersection between that?

[00:07:11] You mentioned a moment, but take us back a little bit. What's the before and the after, and how did all of that kind of work with

[00:07:18] Bill Yoh: your faith journey? Sure. Sure. Yeah. So if I look at the before and that's a great that sort of testimonial type thing. If I look at the before.

[00:07:26] Yeah, I was being relatively successful in my career. I'm a third generation of a large large family business and my brothers and I own and operated together. I was doing well then, but in hindsight, I really wasn't in a position where I was serving. the organization as well as I could. I wasn't necessarily serving myself as well as I could.

[00:07:47] Physically I was close to a hundred pounds heavier than I am now and not in a good way. And I look at my closest relationships my, my wife and I have been married 26 years now. So we were whatever, [00:08:00] eight years, less than that is 18 years. Then we were probably not as open and I was probably not as candid and supportive.

[00:08:06] So I can look at a number of different parts of my life and it's not that my life was in a bad place. But it wasn't in a good place either. And most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, I don't, I believe that I was not living into the person that I was created to be. I like to talk about versions of ourselves and I was not being a very good version of myself.

[00:08:26] And I was being an inconsistent version of myself. But one of the things I've come to appreciate through my journey recently is it's not one thing to say Oh, he never gets mad or he never gets upset or never, whatever. But I think what's important where integrity resides is that he's consistent. We know that when these things happen, this is how Bill's going to react.

[00:08:45] This is how Scott's going to feel like that to me. If you can show up consistently with others, you become dependable and you're being that good version of yourself. So I've tried to be more consistent, more intentional. And then the second part with what you're asking is, as I'm looking at all the [00:09:00] different facets of my life, professional, personal, physical, you name it, volunteer.

[00:09:05] I try to look at them all through the lens of Christ. Even though in many of those circumstances or environments, it's not appropriate to talk through the lens of Christ. If you will, Bible speak, God talk isn't necessarily vogue. So I like the spiritual and the intellectual exercise of translating my faith ethos into a way that, that it shows up.

[00:09:25] In the vernacular of whatever the community is that I'm in, which, by the way, was exactly what Jesus did during his earthly ministry. Circling back a minute, you had that experience of going to Nicaragua, and like you said, you're looking at the... You're in a very different place with a very different group of people, not the world that you would...

[00:09:50] Scott Maderer: normally be familiar with, and yet you started seeing commonalities that, especially when it came to faith, those kinds of things that [00:10:00] at the end of the day we all believe this, or we have this in common. With Christianity today how do you see, and I guess this is a little bit of a loaded question fall into the trap as far as you want here.

[00:10:15] It's not meant to be a trap, but how do you see the kind of Western Christianity today and, Are we focusing on those tenants and what are we doing instead and how how do you see that friction that's going on?

[00:10:31] Bill Yoh: Yeah, no, I think it's a great thing and I'll actually jump right into the trap because I do see friction and I see.

[00:10:39] I see a lot of division. I see a lot of divide. I see these, as I mentioned earlier, these denominational and doctrinal differences show up like, yeah, sure. We're all Christian geez, you're Catholic and you're evangelical and you're a Lutheran. And.

[00:10:54] How's that? And by the way, you're a Jew and you're a Muslim oh, my goodness and as we look at well, or even [00:11:00] Lutheran, and there's

[00:11:00] Scott Maderer: multiple flavors of Lutheran and which flavor of Lutheran are

[00:11:03] Bill Yoh: you? Yeah. And by the way, I converted to Roman Catholicism during this whole process as well that I forgot to mention.

[00:11:10] And so I don't even get the inside jokes between the orders about Augustinians making jokes of Jesuits making jokes of Franciscans. And I I'm I still don't get that stuff. But but no to your point, though, I think society overall is very divided. And it's.

[00:11:27] permeating into faith life and faith communities. There's so much with the digital age and with media pundits and career politicians, all this stuff is all about preying on the relatively few things that, that separate, separate us, that differentiate us, as opposed to the vast commonalities we share, all being created in the image of God and all being created with a bent towards the common good and a bent towards being in relationship with each other and particularly on this digital side and this polarity of [00:12:00] things is, and with this social media world, I feel we have this license now, if I learn one facet about one aspect of your belief system, I am now allowed to extrapolate everything I need to know about who Scott is and what Scott believes and pinpoint the things that are wrong with that.

[00:12:18] And that to me is, It's an, it's anathema to how we're designed, how we're created, how we're meant to be. And it not only applies individually, I think it applies on an institutional level as well. The Christianity you could refer to as an institution. I joined the largest institution within Christianity.

[00:12:35] The Roman Catholic church institutions are fallible, institutions have shortcomings, but on the whole, if you measure what institutions do, and one of the things that led me to the Roman Catholic Church, despite. Many very, despite egregious shortcomings that this institution has is. I look at that and say that nobody on a daily basis, no other organization in the world feeds more people, [00:13:00] heals more people, educates more people than the Roman Catholic Church.

[00:13:03] Yes, do we have our issues and our things? Absolutely we do. But I also want to look at it, I'm not just an uppercase C Catholic, but I'm a lowercase C universal Catholic Christian. As we're taught in our creeds, and how do we span these divisions and focus on those tenets of love and relationship and discerning your talents and gifts and deploying them to help others and recognizing the gospel message of helping those people on the margins is really what's our greatest source of joy.

[00:13:30] If we can all focus on those things and whatever communities or avenues or sectors we're running in. That's how we'll help make the world a better place. I think one of the things that I see a lot, and I've talked about it on the show before, but I'd like to get your kind of insight into it as well.

[00:13:51] Scott Maderer: I think a lot of times We say we're looking for unity with what we're really looking for is uniformity. [00:14:00] I want everyone to look like me, think like me, sound like me, talk like me and then I'm comfortable then I'm okay. And we almost turned it into a joke, right?

[00:14:10] Yeah. If everyone just did what I said, it would be a better world, but yeah, that's core root. down and deep. That is something that we look for and long for. How do you experience that difference between unity and uniformity and how that affects what you're talking about?

[00:14:29] Bill Yoh: Scott, I love that distinction also as a writer and a student of words. I love that idea about unity and uniformity, that first blush synonyms. No, but when you peel it back a layer, actually rather different interpretation. So I'm glad that you have highlighted that. And if I think about what comes to mind.

[00:14:47] Uniformity is as you said, it's not all of us thinking alike. It's actually everybody thinking like me. That's what I'm looking for, right? That's that uniformity thing. But we weren't created to be uniform. [00:15:00] God created each one of us in God's infinitely faceted image. And by design, we are all created different from each other.

[00:15:06] Not one of us is the same. The diversity, both within the human race and biodiversity across all of creation, is a key tenet, a core tenet, to how God created the world. And so if we're trying to force uniformity, we're literally turning our back on God's design. I think to me, it's that simple.

[00:15:27] That's not hyperbole. But from a unity perspective, love, relationship, following Christ's message knowing that we are the image bearers of God and God being love, indwells with inside of us and our role and our responsibility and our opportunity is to share that love with others.

[00:15:48] That drives a unity that, that transcends any kind of difference we could have.

[00:15:54] Scott Maderer: And yet that idea sometimes if we're honest, [00:16:00] there is that feeling sometimes of, wait a minute I you did mission work. That's an example of that, where you go someplace where people don't look like you, don't sound like you. And how did you see that affecting not just you but other people both for the good side and the uncomfortable

[00:16:23] Bill Yoh: side?

[00:16:24] It's, yeah I'm glad you doubled down on that pointed down on that, because one of the things that I found, and again, I talk about my conversion to Roman Catholicism is, People say, oh, you are now a Catholic, therefore you believe X, therefore you believe this, or you vote for this person, or you do that, or you are this, or that, and again, it's that whole idea of, they see, people see monoliths when everything's, everything is a mosaic.

[00:16:51] And that can apply within denominations and doctrines within Christianity. That certainly applies with how Christians would view, say, the Islam [00:17:00] religion or the Judaism seeing these things as monolithic when they're every bit as mosaic as Christianity is. And, but again, you mentioned the mission work being on the mission work, whether it's in Nicaragua, I've had a chance to go to Africa the face differences, the appearance differences are stark, obviously, and they're obvious.

[00:17:21] And, But when you get below that, actually, you almost get not only unity, but you do get to some level of uniformity when you get into the point of faith and the point of relationship. And one of the most powerful things I learned on my first trip, which is what I wrote Unvarnished Faith about was how quickly you can bridge all these divides and how quickly you can be in relationship with each other and be hugging and laughing and crying and confiding with other people.

[00:17:49] because you know that you share the power and the love of Christ between you. It's just this amazing way to accelerate closeness that I haven't experienced in any other fashion.[00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Scott Maderer: One of the things too I think going back to the beginning where you were talking about kind of faith being a component of your life, but not central to your life. Thinking about that I think a lot of folks say there's quote unquote, the professional Christian.

[00:18:21] That's the pastor, that's the priest, that's the even the person that works for a nonprofit that some sort of faith based that they're the professional Christian, but my job I'm just I just show up and I consume on Sunday morning and it feeds me and recharges me for the week and yeah, I may pray for somebody or do something else during the week, but it's not, it's just anecdotal.

[00:18:48] It just shows up almost incidentally, how do you see people missing out on that life of ministry of [00:19:00] being being that Christian 24, seven, not just on Sunday

[00:19:02] Bill Yoh: morning, so to speak. Yeah, no, another awesome topic. And when I was I mentioned you're getting this degree in ministry and theology over during the pandemic.

[00:19:13] One of the things they talked about with lay ministry, which is what you're talking about, not ordained or clerical ministry, but lay ministry is there's the role of bringing the world into the church, which is evangelization, but also the role of bringing the church into the world. And lay ministers have a way just common people, you and me, have a way of doing that that clergy can't, that, or that pastors can't, that, that preachers can't as much because they're viewed as that professional Christian, as you said.

[00:19:39] The biggest way that I found to do that, I talked earlier about using the vernacular language and some of those things, but the biggest way is It's through evangelization, but not through evangelization from the sense of Scott, let me tell you what a better life is for you which I like to interpret as actually, Scott, what I'm really telling you is how you're doing life wrong.[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Nobody wants to let me

[00:20:01] Scott Maderer: tell you all the ways your life is screwed up

[00:20:04] Bill Yoh: And you can thank me that I'm here to fix that. That part doesn't work. But what really works for me is the best way to evangelize is by the witness of my own life. How can I be an evangelist for the way, by the way I live, and so that when I show up for people say, you know what, there's something different about that guy, there's something, there's a there that I'm that's attracting me, that's drawing me, that's appealing to me, that I aspire to be more like, and I like at the end of the Catholic Mass, the priest or the deacon says something to the effect the Mass has ended, go on peace.

[00:20:39] The Mass has ended and preach the gospel. My favorite is what my pastor says. The mass has ended. Go and preach the gospel by the witness of your life. And that to me is evangelization. That's bringing the church into the world. That's recognizing that ministry isn't some big, scary term, but ministry is something we all do by discerning the talents and gifts [00:21:00] God has given us and deploying those gifts to help other people.

[00:21:02] That's literally what ministry is for the non professionals, as you said.

[00:21:10] Scott Maderer: But now let's be honest, right? That's not necessarily quote, easy

[00:21:15] Bill Yoh: to do if you,

[00:21:18] Scott Maderer: if you had to say somebody that's hearing that and go, no, especially evangelism you mentioned that word a couple of times in my experience. A lot of times, if you say that word we're going to have a meeting on evangelism.

[00:21:32] All sorts of pictures come to mind immediately. It's a loaded word in some ways. How do you, how somebody heard that and said, okay, I'd like to do more of that, but that scares the living daylights out of me. I don't even know where to begin. What are some of the things that people can do to,

[00:21:49] Bill Yoh: to start?

[00:21:50] And I fortunately have a chance to talk with people a lot about that. So folks will say I'm in three different small groups on Friday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday morning with different [00:22:00] communities. And folks will say things like I have my job and I have my volunteer things and I coach and my family and I do a quarterly soup kitchen and deliver turkeys on Thanksgiving and they'll say, but I need to do more of that stuff.

[00:22:14] That's the stuff I need to do more of and give when I'm given a chance. My response is yes. And. It's, yes, do more of that stuff, but N, the way you could be a force multiplier in terms of living your faith is how can you recast, reimagine, re envision what you already do with the bulk of your time, professionally, personally, philanthropically, family wise.

[00:22:38] How do you view that as you discerning and deploying your talents and gifts to help other people? And if you can see that through a faith lens and through a service lens. Then all of a sudden, pal, you're not that far from being a full time minister or a fuller time minister than you thought you were, because that's what God wants us to do.

[00:22:56] God wants us to doing God's will and surrendering to [00:23:00] God's will is discerning what we're supposed to do and then going out and doing that. And obviously you can't, not everybody can just up and quit their job or up and change their career, their geography or any of those kinds of things. But if you can look to recast and reimagine and maybe even reinvent who you are and what you do, then you might be a lot closer to ministry than you think.

[00:23:20] So I've got

[00:23:21] Scott Maderer: a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask those, is there anything else about the book or what we've been talking about that you'd really like the

[00:23:31] Bill Yoh: listener to hear? Sure. No, thanks. And yeah, with the book, one of the things I didn't get a chance to say is that the book is designed to be read in community.

[00:23:41] So it's written in six parts. The six part at the end, there are chapter guides for each of the six parts. So small groups, book clubs, families, whatever might do and it's. And actually, my wife gave me this advice. It's got short chapters because even if you're tired at night, you could read a chapter, you're giving the reader a [00:24:00] win, right?

[00:24:01] So instead of these long 15, 20 page chapters, chapter 2, 3 pages, but but it's designed to be consumed in chunks and conversable in chunks. I would certainly encourage anybody who's in community with other people and their faith walk to think about this not to drive a million book sales, but to give yourselves some.

[00:24:22] a platform. Think about character. Think about gratitude. Think about serenity. Think about some of the things I talk in the book that undergird love and relationships.

[00:24:33] Scott Maderer: My brand is Inspired Stewardship, and earlier we talked about the word evangelism, and now that's a loaded word.

[00:24:39] I think stewardship has also become a loaded word in a lot of Christian environments. So when you hear that word, what does the word stewardship mean to you, and how is the impact of that understanding? What has that had on your line? Yeah.

[00:24:54] Bill Yoh: No, I when I first learned of you and we first met I think the first thing I said is, gosh, I love the [00:25:00] name of your show inspired stewardship because it is a term you have to unpack. I don't think it's as. Negatively connotated a term as say evangelism might be probably

[00:25:11] Scott Maderer: not, but it usually means we're starting a building campaign. Can you

[00:25:14] Bill Yoh: raise it's amorphous. It's those things. But so when I talk about it with groups, I ask people to think about how do you, how would you differentiate stewardship from leadership or stewardship from management kind of thing?

[00:25:28] And With stewardship, I get the sense of there's a care and a nurturing and a responsibility that kind of doesn't have to do with, I have some legal or fiduciary or organizational responsibility. I have a broader calling to care and nurture for this community, these assets, this business, this not for profit, whatever it might be.

[00:25:54] And there's a sense of place and time in that [00:26:00] somebody before me was stewarding this and somebody after me is going to be stewarding this and how do I leave it better than before? There's a Native American proverb that I didn't inherit the earth from my ancestors. I'm borrowing it from my children.

[00:26:11] And that's the kind of thing that for me comes forward with stewardship. And again it's as you were. smart enough to do. It's right in the center square of what the faith journey is about. How are you nurturing love? How are you nurturing relationships with others? How are you nurturing the church?

[00:26:29] How are you nurturing the world and creation and all these things that's been these unbelievable gifts we've been given so that generations after us can have the same kind of luxury and beauty that we've experienced. So

[00:26:44] Scott Maderer: this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody.

[00:26:47] Imagine for a minute, I invented this magical machine and with the power of that machine, I was able to pick you up from where you sit today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe [00:27:00] 250 years, but through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life and see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind.

[00:27:12] What impact do you hope you've left on the world?

[00:27:14] Bill Yoh: So I only have to think out 150 or 200 years, Scott, huh? Okay. Yeah. No pressure. No, not at all. I'll tell you what pops to mind is a story. And then I'll unpack the story. It's a quick one, but this spring I had a chance. My, the ministry we did was about food insecurity in Nicaragua, but food insecurity is everywhere.

[00:27:36] So there's a group in Philadelphia where I live called fill abundance and they're the largest food bank in, in the region. Yeah. Feed hundreds of thousands of people, an amazing ministry, amazing it's secular, but an amazing organization. I had the chance to do an event there this spring, and I invited a bunch of people, and 60 or 70 people showed up on a Thursday night, and for a couple hours, Packed breakfasts is for underserved Children.

[00:27:59] So 12, [00:28:00] 000 kids got breakfast over the next couple of months who wouldn't have otherwise got it because of the work this group did. But what was amazing about it is if I got 20 pieces of feedback on what people thought about the night, 18 of them used the word fun. It wasn't teamwork. It wasn't competitive.

[00:28:15] It wasn't difference making it. It was fun. And as I've discerned on that and reflect on that, what I've come to realize is that if we are truly wired to be in relationship with others and truly wired to help people, those people who are on the margins and are underserved. Maybe when we're actually living into that person and that version of ourselves, God has created so that shows up as joy and joy, we can express as fun.

[00:28:39] So if I can look at a way where I can, where people can have been encouraged to be better versions of them into who they're created meant to be. And as a res be serving other people a as fun or as joy, man, [00:29:00] th

[00:29:02] Scott Maderer: So what's next? What's on you finish out the rest o

[00:29:08] Bill Yoh: So just the next year, not the next 150 years,

[00:29:10] Scott Maderer: we're going to shorten it. We'll dial it in just a little appreciate

[00:29:13] Bill Yoh: that. So no, I'm glad you asked. In fact, I'm in, in a major discerning process on that right now. So that, so the book's been out since the beginning of the year shameless plug, it went to number one bestseller on Amazon.

[00:29:28] So I've had the chance to have a lot of really rich and meaningful conversations like this one today. And the whole book tour stuff as that's winding down, what I've been discerning on is. I'm feeling called to be in relationship, call it in ministry, walking with individuals and organizations of means and of privilege.

[00:29:51] I come from a world of means and a privilege. I live in a world of means and a privilege, but what's really what I think God is saying to me is number one people of [00:30:00] privilege. are often and sometimes rightly so vilified Oh, they're the haves and they don't care and these kinds of things.

[00:30:08] But people of privilege are creating God's image and are, deserve dignity and ministry every bit as much. But then the second part is if I can walk with people of means and a privilege and encourage them to change their sort of direction, even just a degree or two, the time, talent, and treasure that they can bring to bear for others can really move the needle in some exciting ways.

[00:30:30] So thematically, that's where I'm going. I'm literally in the process of searching practically for where that's going to be. So if you or any of your listeners say, Oh my gosh, what Bill talked about, this is the exact kind of thing that he should be doing. I'm all ears and all open heart for wherever that might take me.

[00:30:47] So thanks for that chance.

[00:30:48] Scott Maderer: Awesome.

[00:30:53] You can find out more about Bill on his website over at unvarnishedfaith. com. And of [00:31:00] course I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Bill, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:31:06] Bill Yoh: No, Scott, I just so grateful for this time and any chance I get the opportunity to put some gratitude out there into the world, knowing that every time we put gratitude out, it comes back.

[00:31:16] I just want to say how much I appreciate you and what you do and the commitment your audience has for trying to make the world a better place. So I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank

[00:31:24] Scott Maderer: you.

[00:31:31] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspiredstewardship.

[00:31:54] com iTunes rate, all one word, [00:32:00] iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review, and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I ask Bill about:

  • The story of his faith and writing Unvarnished faith...   
  • Why, as Christians, we often stray from the core tenets of faith...
  • Why we often confuse striving for unity with uniformity...
  • and more.....

Some of the Resources recommended in this episode: 

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

What comes to mind uniformity is not all of us thinking alike it’s everyone thinking like me… But we weren’t created to be uniform.  But we weren’t created to be uniform God created each one of us in God’s infinitely faceted image. – Bill Yoh

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You can connect with Bill using the resources below:

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About the author 

Scott

Helping people to be better Stewards of God's gifts. Because Stewardship is about more than money.

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