CDF CapitalTM
Senior Vice President, Ministry Development
Ah, to be sixteen years old again. Driving my 1972 Chevy Nova with my girlfriend at my side listening to Bruce Springsteen belt out Born to Run on my eight-track player. The year was 1976 and the U.S. was absorbed in its bicentennial celebration. My church had just finished its new educational building and we dedicated it with an outdoor worship service in the adjacent parking lot. I would meet up with my friends on Friday nights when they finished their shift at Pup ‘n’ Taco and we would hang out ‘til two in the morning at Winchell’s Doughnuts. Not a safer place in town, since there were always two or three patrol cars parked close by.
I could drift through those memories all day long. If you live in the past, however, you run the risk of missing brighter hopes which lay in the future.
CDF had a sixteenth birthday once upon a time. The year was 1969 and it was marked by the Fund reaching one million dollars in total assets. That was the impossible dream of CDF’s founders in 1953. It seemed so far-reaching as to be almost outlandish.
The year was 1969 and it was marked by the Fund reaching one million dollars in total assets.
It was just one year earlier that CDF had hired Ralph Dornette as its first full-time president.
That was a brighter landmark than reaching one million dollars in assets, because Ralph looked to the future and what CDF could be, rather than what it had been. What Ralph brought to the table for CDF was change. And a lot of it.
Within just a few months of Ralph’s arrival he instituted programs which escalated the number of investments coming into the Fund and, subsequently, the number of loans CDF was able to make to churches. The Fund grew, and alongside it, churches grew. The dream of CDF’s founders was to grow the Fund so churches could grow. Now their dream was advancing exponentially.
What was the fledgling Churches of Christ Building and Loan Fund was re-christened Church Development Fund.
It was more than a name change. A seismic organizational shift had taken place.
In the mid-1990’s the dream was expanded even further. Church Development Fund’s work had been limited primarily to Southern California with some dabbling in Northern California and an occasional loan in Nevada and Hawaii. Now a wider net was cast and CDF started helping churches grow in other states; starting in Arizona, then New Hampshire, Louisiana and Missouri. The ten-year run of the Blueprint Tour of leadership development training events not only put CDF’s name on the U.S. map, it proved that CDF was interested in more than just making loans. It could provide churches with more than just financial capital.
As you read this post it comes as part of a new website. There’s a lot more than a new website running in the background, however, it’s really another new look at how CDF helps churches grow. CDF’s President, Dusty Rubeck, summed up where we’re headed when he said, “Money alone in the Kingdom of God doesn’t achieve anything.” So true.
If the only thing CDF does is provide financial capital to churches we’re not accomplishing anything. How many church leaders lay awake at night envisioning how they can get their church farther in debt? None. What they do dream about while lying awake is how they can grow Christ’s church. So it’s up to us to provide more than financial capital. When CDF provides financial capital along with leadership capital, and on top of that spiritual capital, we have the power to see churches grow through transformational capital. All of that adds up to our new moniker, CDF Capital. Did you catch that name at the top of the page? CDF Capital. That’s us now!
CDF Capital? It’s new, but it’s not. The mission has not changed - Helping Churches Grow. The methods have evolved. Financial Capital. Leadership Capital. Spiritual Capital. It all adds up to CDF Capital.
So now the 59 CDF shirts hanging in my closet go on the dust heap of history. I do have four brand new CDF Capital shirts hanging there, ready to hit the road. They’ll be in a much more comfortable ride than that ’72 Nova. I’ll be blessed with that same girl by my side, now my wife of thirty-six years, and I can still blast a little Springsteen on the car stereo, albeit with some fancier technology than that eight-track player. Some things change. Some things stay the same.
CDF Capital? It’s new, but it’s not. The mission has not changed - Helping Churches Grow. The methods have evolved. Financial Capital. Leadership Capital. Spiritual Capital. It all adds up to CDF Capital.
