If Clark Galloway had known how God would answer his prayer, he might have never prayed it. But when he handed everything over to God, God took it all … and then gave it back, with abundance.
Growing up, Clark knew his life would be about serving God in ministry. He was raised in a supportive Christian home. His mother was a professor at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, his hometown. He had a great church home and youth group. “All the ingredients were there to make sure the Word did not return void in my life,” Clark says.
So, when the time came for Clark to choose a vocational path, he enrolled in a divinity school to become a pastor. But he shifted to the business world after his second semester and left ministry behind. Or so he thought.
Success
Years later, at the height of his career, with his company – and income – growing faster than he’d anticipated, God brought Clark to a reckoning. “I had a business, and it was doing very well,” Clark said, “but I did not like who I saw myself becoming. I was full of pride, arrogance, and materialism.”
In a moment of clarity during his personal devotional time one day, Clark was convicted by the truth that everything he had, and all of his being, belonged to God. And he realized he wasn’t handing every part of his life over to God. He was holding back his income. His time. His skills. That’s when Clark prayed the words that would change everything:
“Lord, I want to become your disciple. I’m going to follow you in all aspects of my life, including my job and income. You may have it all. You may have your way with me. I’m ready.”
Suffering and hope
That surrender was followed by an 18-month season of suffering. Clark lost his job and entered a contentious lawsuit with his former employer. He went nine months with no income. His wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. They sold their airplane. They sold their house. They sold their car. Clark’s father died unexpectedly. His best friend died from brain cancer.
“I felt like the Lord was taking every crutch I had away from me to lean wholly on him for my sustenance, my relationships, my value, and most importantly, my identity,” Clark says.
And yet, Clark remembers glimmers of hope piercing the darkness in those months. Old clients who called with encouragements. A daily morning devotional with his mother. Scripture becoming more alive than ever before.
After reading the Parable of the Talents, Clark began to realize that everything he had – his wealth, his assets, his mind, his time – were all entrusted to him for a reason. “That blew me away,” Clark says. “The Lord entrusted things to me to make a return on his investment, to move the needle of the kingdom.”
That identity gave Clark the courage to rebuild – not just a business, but a life that might measure up to all God had entrusted to him.
Rebuilding with purpose
Clark’s first sign that God was ready to hand back all he’d taken came when he went to buy a used car. He’d been driving his brother’s old PT Cruiser, and, when that broke down, his grandparents’ old Buick Regal. But if Clark was going to build a business, he needed something more reliable.
He went to the dealership where he’d sold his Chrysler 300 two years earlier and asked for a cheap, reliable car. The dealer walked Clark to the back of the lot, pointed and said, “That one there.”
“There was my Chrysler 300!” Clark says. “After almost two and a half years.” He bought it back for $5,000 less and retired it over a decade later with 360,000 miles on it.
With nothing to his name but the car, Clark traveled across the state and worked in consulting while waiting out a non-compete. After two years, Clark started another business, a K-12 education staffing agency, and it began to grow. But this time, it was different.
Clark built a leadership team of people he knew shared his faith. He told them he wanted to grow an organization based on a servant leadership – on what Jesus would expect of them. And so they did.
The business exploded. It grew from a regional staffing firm to one of the nation’s largest providers of outsourced staff in more than 600 school districts across the country.
For 10 years, Clark built the company in a God-honoring way – in both culture and operations. “Even though we were serving the public sector, our clients knew exactly what we believed,” Clark says. “And our employees knew we prayed before everything.”
As the business flourished, Clark realized that while he felt able to take a business from mid-cap to large-cap, he didn’t want to lead a company of that size. “I don’t like wearing suits to work, much less wining and dining people,” Clark says.
At the same time, Clark’s heart was leaning back toward ministry, this time focused on recognizing all he had was not his own but for the purpose of turning hearts toward God.
So, he decided to sell his portion of the business and start following the direction of God’s leading.
“He’d given me time. He’d given me a mind. He’d given me treasure. I knew I’d better make a difference in the kingdom, or he was going to give it all to someone else to do it.”
A new kind of life
As Clark prepared to sell his portion of the company, he met with his attorney to create a private foundation. Knowing he wanted a mechanism for true kingdom impact in addition to tax-wise strategy, his attorney told him the National Christian Foundation (NCF) could help him by becoming a partial owner of the company before the sale. So, when the company sold, the proceeds would end up in a Giving Fund for supporting the causes he cares about.
“I said, ‘You mean I don’t have to set up a board? I can just … give?’” Clark says. “He told me, ‘Clark, I know you’re an administrative guy, but go fill your life with other things.’”
So, Clark set up a Giving Fund and donated shares of his business. In doing so, he opened the door to a new kind of life. He began sending money to charities he knew personally and were doing good work. He even learned how to submit a new charity for NCF to vet for their list of approved organizations.
“I bet I’ve brought eight new charities to that list!”
With NCF’s separately managed account, Clark was able to bring his own registered investment advisor in to choose how to invest his charitable dollars. Soon, his Giving Fund balance began growing faster than he could spend it.
So, Clark sat down with his pastor and came up with a giving plan based on a criteria for charities he’d developed – seven guidelines to ensure the charities Clark supports are highly effective, scalable organizations, where he can know, and work hands-on with, the board on the mission field.
“I’m using the talents the Lord has put in my lap. And I’m having an absolute ball.”
Abundance and adventure
Clark’s abundant life wasn’t found in just giving. He now knows many ministries working in Latin America and spends half his year recruiting friends and neighbors to go there with him and the other half doing hands-on mission work.
“I don’t go after missionaries; I go after projects,” Clark says. “And now I’m dragging large groups of my friends down to Central and South America to get involved,” Clark says.
They’ve befriended a pastor in Guatemala teaching his congregation how to be disciples and carry the gospel to remote villages. They drive into the Columbian mountains to the Venezuelan refugee camps in the border city of Cucuta, where they’re building children’s centers – safe places for moms to leave their kids while they go find work.
This year, Clark is recruiting people and trucks to help him deliver six million Christian curriculum books to school districts across nine South American countries. They’ve had to leave trucks in rivers, get pulled out of a marsh by oxen, and even clung to the sides of pickup trucks floating on riverboats while trying to get to these remote schools. But the adventure is worth it.
“Teachers will come up to us shaking and crying, and say, ‘Do you realize this is the only Jesus some of these kids will ever get in their lives?’” Clark says.
Using his Giving Fund, Clark is able not only to generate life change for millions , but also for himself, his family, and his friends. Today, Clark dreams of introducing all Christians to the kind of life God has in store for them: not just a life of giving, but a life of going. Not just as a way to transform their own lives, but as a way to transform the entire Church.
He wishes more people would get involved in projects they could pour their lives into, so they could experience the joy he has found. “I just think of 1 Timothy,” Clark says, “I am finally storing up the kind of treasure that allows me to take hold of life that is truly life.”
Clark had built a life that looked successful from the outside, relying only on himself. But deep down, it felt empty. When he prayed and surrendered everything to God, he began a long, hard path back to a hands-on, abundant-life ministry.
Today, that life is full, not because he kept it, but because he gave it all away. And in doing so, found what he was truly made for.
*Gifts may be made to one of NCF’s affiliated ministries.
