A friend of mine died 20 years ago this week — July 4, 2003: Larry Burkett.
From the mid-1970s until his death nearly 30 years later, Larry was the nation's premier teacher on Christian financial discipleship. Christianity Today once noted that his books and other resources "were largely responsible for creating' money' and' finance' sections in Christian bookstores."
But Larry's impact was more far-reaching than that. In 1977, only a year after starting his nonprofit ministry called Christian Financial Concepts (later named Crown Financial Ministries), Larry helped launch the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International, now the world's largest peer-to-peer marketplace ministry.
In the early 1980s, he was one of the co-founders of the National Christian Foundation. Today, NCF is among the top 10 charitable enterprises in the U.S. and is the world's largest Christian Foundation, making billions of dollars in donor-recommended grants to tens of thousands of charities.
As long-time SMI members know, Sound Mind Investing would not have come into being without Larry's vision and encouragement! (In our July 2018 issue, we re-published an insightful article by Larry that appeared in SMI's premier issue in the summer of 1990.)
And in 1994, Larry was instrumental in founding — along with Bill Bright, James Dobson, and others — the legal-defense group Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF has argued and won many important religious-liberty and free-speech cases, including 15 victories before U.S. Supreme Court. (One of those Supreme Court victories came last week.)
I had the privilege and pleasure of working with Larry Burkett for nearly 13 years — as a writer/researcher and as the executive producer of his radio programs Money Matters and How to Manage Your Money. The man you heard on the air was the same man I knew off the air: a man of grace, truth, love, and compassion.
A few years ago, an SMI member wrote to ask if recordings of Larry's radio broadcasts were still available (Larry was on the air daily from about 1980 until shortly before his death in 2003). Regrettably, most of that broadcast material no longer exists, but Crown Financial Ministries occasionally re-runs something from the archives.
Also, Moody Audio has recordings of Larry's presentations at various Moody Bible Institute conferences over the years. You can listen to some of those presentations on this website.
Remarkably, Larry Burkett didn't give his life to Jesus Christ until he was 33 years old. From that point onward, he poured his heart and soul into serving his Lord faithfully. Today, millions — not only in the U.S. but worldwide — benefit from the Christ-honoring fruit of Larry's life and ministry. Thanks be to God!
