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In the mid-1970s, he worked in Campus Crusade for Christ's deferred-giving and estate-planning division, but Burkett was anything but a natural salesman—he hated asking for money. His personal passion was understanding the practical implications of biblical teaching on the role of money in individual believers' lives. Burkett's reputation spread, and he was invited to speak to a class of graduating seniors at Dallas Theological Seminary on the rudiments of personal budgeting and church finances.

Burkett's apotheosis did not come until after the talk, as he sat with faculty members over lunch. Surrounded by professors with earned doctorates in biblical studies, theology, and ancient languages, he found himself inundated with questions about money-related Bible verses and requests for advice on the most elementary matters of financial management. Burkett says he thought to himself: It is really true that in the land of the blind a one-eyed man can become king.

That experience, coupled with his desire to help Christians understand "God's perspective on finances," eventually led Burkett to borrow $25,000 from friends to self-publish his 1975 book Your Finances in Changing Times. Carried in Campus Crusade's Here's Life catalog, the book was hardly a blockbuster, selling an estimated 30,000 copies in its first six years. Nonetheless, his growing popularity as a seminar speaker convinced Burkett that it was time to strike out on his own as a Christian financial counselor. In 1976 Burkett left Campus Crusade and, with Judy, formally incorporated Christian Financial Concepts (CFC), running it from the basement of their suburban Atlanta home.

CFC, the former "Mom and Pop ministry," now operates on an annual budget of over $12 million and employs 134 staff members at its headquarters in Gainesville, Georgia. In 1999 its staff fielded more than 400,000 telephone calls, letters, and e-mail requests for help and information while providing oversight to 40 volunteer seminar speakers and 1,200 volunteer referral counselors across America who dealt with nearly 20,000 counseling requests. CFC purveys a dizzying array of resources and financial teaching aids.

Burkett finds the basic financial truth that undergirds all others in "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it " (1 Corinthians 10:26, NIV). That includes all of a believer's money and possessions as well. Burkett argues that God uses money in numerous ways in the individual Christian's life. Based on his reading of the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 and Christ's question in Luke 16:11 ("Therefore if you have not been faithful in the [use of] unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" NKJV), Burkett contends that the use of money is one of God's primary training grounds for every believer. Indeed, Burkett argued in a 1985 workbook that the "way a Christian uses money is the clearest outside indicator of what the inside commitment is really like."

These beliefs, however, do not parlay into Burkett's advocating a vow of poverty. "I believe God wants us to lead a comfortable life," he wrote in a 1995 booklet. Burkett's reading of how Romans 12:5-8 describes the gift of giving implies that first "there must be a gift of gathering." Convinced there is no inherent spirituality in being impoverished for poverty's sake, Burkett sees the potential of a dangerously pharisaical streak of pride in those he calls "stoics" who crow about a simple lifestyle and "believe that to follow Jesus a Christian must sell everything and become a pauper."

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June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7