![]() ![]() His company, the Lampo Group, now has hundreds of employees. His programs are available in high schools and on military bases, and Ramsey himself can be heard through his daily radio show, his nightly Fox Business broadcast, his Web sites, his live events, and his many books, including a special line of children’s stories. Jim Sammons, Crown Financial Ministries, and others all offer similar messages to get out of debt, tithe, and so on-not to mention the far more numerous proponents of the so-called prosperity gospel, who encourage consumption rather than restraint because they believe that God will shower the faithful with riches (see “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?,” page 38).īut although other evangelical financial advisers flourish mostly within their religious communities, Ramsey has made himself the breakout act, bringing his basic message to the wider world. Ramsey is not the first evangelical to sell financial advice to his co-religionists, of course. The Dave Ramsey program got traction in evangelical churches, which are still one of the biggest distribution networks for his 13-week video program, Financial Peace University. The merchants’ loss is Ramsey’s gain: he has become rich spreading his debt-free gospel. ” At that moment, he told an audience so hushed that we could hear the ice squeak, Ramsey decided to never borrow another dollar again.īy all accounts, he hasn’t-a commitment that many business owners would like to catch him out on, since his disciples routinely shun lucrative financing deals at car dealerships, furniture stores, and electronics warehouses. How, searching for help in his hour of need, he turned to the Bible and discovered Proverbs 22:7: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender. We heard how, during the second half of the 1980s, a young Ramsey built up a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire-then lost it all as the bank got nervous and called his loans, ultimately forcing him and his wife into bankruptcy. ![]() But the format was more tent revival than accounting seminar, with the first 90 minutes or so mostly devoted to Ramsey’s personal story of ruin and redemption. There was, of course, a great deal of talk about money, and what to do with it. “I think I just attended my first prayer meeting,” I told him. Afterward, my fiancé, who grew up in the Bible Belt, called me to ask what I’d thought. The ostensible topic: getting your financial life in order. ![]() On a fine summer day at the end of August, I paid $220 for front-row seats on the floor of a minor-league hockey rink in Detroit, just to hear Ramsey talk for five hours. But when he runs out onstage and starts dispensing financial advice, you realize that he could have been a great preacher. With his goatee and what’s left of his graying hair trimmed close to his head, he looks mostly like what he is-a well-groomed, middle- to upper-middle-class American professional. He’s a little on the short side, neither fat nor thin, and he wears jeans and a sports jacket, not a shiny suit and an oily smile. D ave Ramsey looks nothing like a televangelist. ![]()
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