AMEN 2014: Joined Together

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Breakout Sessions B

Bob Hunsaker

Ghost in Your Genes OR God in Your Genes

Nyse Collins

Harnessing Our Lay People in Health Education

Randy Bivens

Structuring Your Family for Financial Success and Service

Evelyn Kissinger

Fit & Free

So, what gives me the credentials to be talking about financial planning?

I actually have completed the course work to be a certified financial planner, in addition to being a physician.

And I'm gonna give you some examples of actually how I've real time helped people with financial planning.

But more than that, we've studied the scriptural basis for a financial plan and what that means.

And you're gonna see a lot of biblical references when we talk about what's going on.

I actually had the imaging contract for 2 hospitals, 1 of which I don't actually work at anymore in Ukiah.

I have privileges, but I had the chance to hire somebody right at a UCSF fellowship.

You know, you don't get very many of those.

I still manage the contract up in Tillamook, and I manage the contracts, hire the radiologist, you know, keep it rolling.

And so I have a revenue stream, kind of a built-in revenue stream that provides me an income, it allows me the freedom to do some other things.

And because of that I do some other things.

I'm president of Life and Health Network.

The great thing to be president of a media company is you can give them a handout, an outline and tell them to make you a keynote presentation.

And so if this looks good, it's not my fault.

Well, it is kind of my fault, but I didn't do any of it.

So I'm president of Life and Health Network, but More importantly, I guess for the last year and a half, I've been Chief Operating Officer at Weimar Institute.

And we've had some amazing changes that have occurred, and God just blessing that institute.

Nedley alluded to it a little bit last night.

In the last month, we had a $3.2 million debt to Amazing Facts when those 2 ministries separated.

That debt was starting to accrue interest on the 7th of August.

On the 7th of August, we bought the debt down from 3.2 million down to 1 million.

We delivered a check to Mike Rich who was, it was during ASI, we delivered a check to them for a million dollars.

I wish I was there except on August 7th I was down in Costa MESA meeting with the Educational Licensing Committee of the Board of Registered Nursing for the State of California to get nursing credentialing, which we actually did.

We got full approval to start a nursing school.

Anderson is back in the back of the room there, and she is instrumental and actually for years of making this happen, instrumental in actually making this happen and thank you Shirley for being here and Melanie's here too.

The 2 of them are the reason we got nursing accreditation here on campus and thank you guys for coming.

But in addition to that, Just about 3 weeks ago, we were on a conference call with WASC, which is the Western Association of Secondary Colleges.

We've been applying to get accreditation for a college so that credits are transferred.

We actually can graduate people from WMAR, and We do, and they go to Loma Linda, to the medical school and dental school.

They can't actually get into the health school for some reason.

We've written a letter to Dick Hart saying, how come the medical school accepts our transfer credits but the school of health doesn't?

But if we had WASC approval, that transfer of credit isn't even an issue.

So we were on a conference call with them, and there were about 7 or 8 of us answering questions because they have 2 readers that are signed by WASC that are senior professors, presidents of colleges.

And they look through your entire application, 657 pages worth, and try to determine if you're eligible for status.

They denied us 2 years ago, completely denied us.

The option was they could deny us again, but we felt we had a much better application.

They could actually condition us, and that's what we were sure we were going to get.

We're going to get conditioned and they were going to tell us to buff up our finances or buff up our curriculum or they're going to do something.

Or they could give us full approval and we felt it was going to be a miracle if they gave us full approval and it was going to take a miracle to have us denied again.

We just didn't feel that was going to happen.

So in the prayer session before this, actually people remind me that I had this prayer.

I said, Lord, I want you to either completely deny us, just slam that door shut, or give us complete approval.

I don't want any of this stuff in between.

We'll just stop spending money and stop doing it or give us approval.

Nedley as we're leaving, I said, so Neil, what do you think the odds are?

And he goes, 50-50 chance they're gonna deny us again.

Because there were some people on the WASC board who specifically are not Weimar friendly.

So we felt we were gonna get denied again.

And they said, well, we're busy for the next 2 or 3 days, but give us about 3 or 4 days and we'll be able to give you an answer.

So that's okay, they'll give us an answer.

Sebold called me and he said that Chris Oberg, who was the WASCA consultant assigned to us, he said, Chris called me and said that they don't need 3 days.

We're further along the eligibility status to our knowledge than any other self-supporting educational institution since Madison College.

And if you remember the Madison history, part of the reason why they folded was because they chose not to get accredited for their, especially their nursing program.

They had like, I don't know, where did, there are people in this room that know this history better than I, but there are a couple hundred nurses and the next day they were just not in school anymore.

Even though I'm a physician, physicians traditionally have really bad financial planning.

We think we know everything because we passed all the classes and we're at the top.

We're A type, type A, and we just thought, we can just do anything.

That's why physician, Adventist physician pilots have terrible records.

My wife has a girlfriend and she has a, they have another mutual friend and their dad was a pilot and he finally stopped flying.

There were 6 guys in this group of Adventist physicians who were pilots.

And they didn't die of coronary heart disease, they died of plane crashes.

Physicians assume that they know everything and the thing is we have great capacity to learn sometimes, but sometimes we don't have the knowledge base.

And because we have a revenue stream, we just start spending money indiscriminately.

And I'm going to try to give you some ideas and principles, biblical principles, how we can organize our financial planning so that it's according to God's glory and that we have revenue to give back.

Neither Neil nor myself take any salary from Weimar Institute.

Because as we tell them, if you just gave us the money, we would just have to give it back to you.

I mean, God blesses us with a revenue stream so that we can actually do this and I think that's what God wants us to be doing, be financially secure so that you can provide service which is not taxing to the ministry.

So I'm going to tell you a story about an ER physician, this is a real story, a real friend who had this debt.

Now this was about 5 years ago, so some of these interest rates that you will see are not market rates currently.

But he had a medical student loan currently at $93, 000 at 10% accruing interest.

He had a home mortgage at 7% and the home was currently, the mortgage was at 425, 000.

They had consumer credit of almost $50, 000 at a combined global 8.5% interest, they had a car loan at 8%, 27, 000, then an airplane loan of 6.5%, 35, 000.

Now this guy was not an Adventist physician, so it's amazing his rate of death is not as bad, even though he's a physician and a pilot.

Series

Breakout Sessions B

Structuring Your Family for Financial Success and Service

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Personal Finance

1h 7m

Financial Freedom Seminar

Counting the Cost: Saving, Spending, and Budgeting

56m

Family Finances for Life

Early Years - Part 2

57m

SWYC 2005 Plenary Sessions

SWYC 2005: Testimonies

43m

Young Professionals

Personal Finance on an Index Card

32m

Level 1 Homesteading and Home Gardening

Greater Simplicity

1h 1m

It's Your Money! Isn't It?

3- In Everything You Do Put God First

28m

Making a House a Home

06 Building a Financial Foundation

1h 3m

GYC 2011 totalChurch

Total Church: All Things In Common

1h 45m

Faith and Finance

Session 2: Dealing with Credit Cards, Student Loans, and other Debts

50m

Financial Freedom Seminar

Slave to the Lender: Practical Tips on Dealing with Debt

1h 8m

Financing Yourself

Financing Yourself- Part 4

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine