Hey, all!
QUICK INTRO:
My name is John Holzmann. Technically, according to the leaders in the churches of which I have been and am, today, a member, I have never held the office of deacon. Nor have my wife or I been directly involved in or highly concerned about the material/financial charitable work of any denomination or any local congregation. However, I have been and am deeply concerned about the education Christians need in order to be good stewards of the wealth—-whether great or little—that God places in our hands.
I began with little material but untold social, spiritual, intellectual and other forms of wealth. After serving as (financially poor-as-church-mice) raise-your-own-support missionaries at the US Center for World Mission in the mid- to late 80s, my wife and I founded Sonlight Curriculum, a company devoted to the development and distribution of a Christian, literature-based, internationally-oriented, pre-K through 12th grade homeschool curriculum. And we became wealthy. And we have been asking God and wrestling through: What does it mean to be good stewards of the resources God has put in our hands? How do we teach future generations how to steward the resources God has placed (and will yet place) in their hands?
I sense these are questions very similar to those on the heart and mind of the founder of this website. And so I look forward to learning together with you.
DEEPER INTRO:
I was raised in the late 1950s to early 70s, the second of six children, by a mom who, herself, came from devout evangelical, Finnish Congregational parents, and a dad who had grown up in the 1920s and ‘30s in a nominally Jewish family in Germany. Without getting further into the details of those features of my heritage, let me say that our family attended-—and was deeply engaged in—evangelical Presbyterian, Bible and Congregational churches (in Northern California and upstate New York throughout my growing up years). I first gave my life to Christ when I was 4 (and repeatedly, and with ever deeper passion, since). I earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Michigan State (1973-77) on the way, I hoped, to becoming a pastor.
While there at MSU, I became deeply engaged with a local congregation [broadly evangelical, pastored by an evangelical baptist], as well as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Navigators (though my strongest connections were with the local church and the Navs). In 1974, I dropped out of school for a year so I could gain in-state residency and financial independence from my parents. I worked that year with the founders of the MSU Office of Programs for Handicappers, Judy Taylor, a (post-Polio) quadriplegic, and Eric Gentile, a (spinal injury) paraplegic. My involvement with these two pioneers in seeking awareness of and consideration for the needs of handicappers helped shape my approach to life.
While at MSU, I met Sarita, a Grand Rapids-raised daughter of Dutch, Christian Reformed immigrants. She became my wife the day after my last final in the spring of 1977.
From ‘77 to ‘79, I worked as a sales representative to the church and school markets for a distributor of reprographic equipment and supplies and, beginning in ‘78, to law offices, the precursors to modern word processors: what were known as mag card writers.
From ‘79 to ‘82, I studied to become a pastor at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, then (from 1982 to end of 1983) served as a “minister of evangelism” in a Christian Reformed church that was trying to figure out how to reach across the social barriers between its all-Dutch-ancestry members and the socially- and ethnically- (not to mention, somewhat racially-) changed neighborhood in which the church building was then located in northern New Jersey.
[SIDE NOTE, because I have a sense it will be of interest to some participants. I first ran into Dr. Gary North and the Christian Reconstructionist community of thinker/writers during my time at seminary. I have read many of their—-and especially Dr. North’s—-books. I am intrigued by much of what Dr. North and his colleagues have written. I appreciate the intellectual and historical and spiritual challenges they lay down for the rest of us seriously to consider. I am sure they influence me in different ways. I do not consider myself a Christian Reconstructionist. It was through Dr. North that I first heard of this website.]
I was asked to leave my ministry at the New Jersey church at the end of 1984, and Sarita and I and our eldest daughter moved to Pasadena, California, where I worked with Dr. Ralph Winter, the founder of what was then known as the US Center for World Mission. (If you’ve heard of “unreached peoples” or “the 10/40 Window” or are even familiar with the concept of sending missionaries to minister to people groups as opposed to sending missionaries to nations [understood as nation-states], you have been touched by Dr. Winter.) I served as the editor of Mission Frontiers magazine.
While still living at the Center but no longer working for Dr. Winter, my wife and I began homeschooling and, as I said above, soon founded Sonlight Curriculum.
Less than a year after we started Sonlight, the mission agency with which we were then associated moved from Southern California to the south metro Denver area and we moved with them. We have lived there ever since . . . until a few months ago when our previously once-a-month week-long visits suddenly became a long-term, full-time commitment to living on the island of Ambergris Caye in Belize. We had thought we would make Belize our home sometime in the future. It appears to have become our full-time residence (at least, that is how we are approaching it) as of March 2020!
Meanwhile, Sarita continues to serve as President and CEO of InquisiCorp, the holding company for Sonlight Curriculum and several other educational brands, and I am working on multiple projects, including Ready2Prosper, an educational program for young people and their parents having to do with stewardship of the resources God places in our hands; multi-generational family legacy planning and governance; founding a company in Belize; and reaching into our local community alongside a local church and the fledgling Rotary Club.
Just to round out my bio, I should mention that . . .
* Sarita and I are parents of four (girl-boy-girl-boy; now 41, 37, 35 and 33) and grandparents of nine surviving grandkids (age 18 to newborn).
* We are currently members of a strongly evangelical, missional and (at least confessionally) charismatic Anglican Church in Englewood, CO—-Wellspring—-that is dedicated to multiplying local congregations. That church has a vibrant ministry to the homeless.
* We are becoming involved with a church of a decidedly different character (though also evangelical and biblical in commitment) here in Belize. It’s a multi-campus church out of Albuquerque, NM, called Sagebrush.
* Between New Jersey’s Christian Reformed and Colorado’s Anglican, we were members of an evangelical Congregational church, a Foursquare church, an evangelical Presbyterian church (that was thrown out of the PCUSA shortly before we arrived, and later joined the EPC), another Foursquare church, and, eventually, the Anglican Church where we have found ourselves for the last six years.
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Is there a particular ministry that you are on fire about that you want to dedicate your energy to improving? If so, what is it, and why?
Belizean society has so much that makes it beautiful. But it is also remarkably broken. How do you (i.e., how can we) disciple a nation? I’m thinking a well-run business actually offers a wonderful opportunity. But it’s a learning experience.
Sarita and I are trying to figure out how to interface appropriately in a patronage culture, and where government corruption is more openly acknowledged and practiced than it is in the United States. I am establishing relationships with local business people (which means mostly people who own rather small businesses—-like the 80-something-year-old woman who sells fresh fruit juices; or the 40-something-year-old woman who runs a 400-square-foot grocery store; or the Lebanese immigrant Muslim man who owns a [probably about US$250,000 annual sales] hardware store; etc.). I’ve also joined the local Rotary Club (made up primarily of expats who want to do good in society).
But how do we speak into the lives of people whose social-sexual ethic (by my estimate, 95% of them) holds no value for marriage? Where a very high percentage of men would rather sit and drink than hold a steady job? Where children are left to fend for themselves because their mothers have to work and they can’t afford to buy the books and uniforms, etc., necessary to attend the public elementary school?
How do we properly interact with and direct the activities of, much less properly remunerate, the caretaker of our property? How about (those same questions) concerning the teams of men we hire on a regular basis to do various tasks we need doing?
We are still seeking answers to these kinds of questions!
Geographically speaking, where (in the world) do you plan to apply the information you learn from this site? —-The majority will benefit US citizens in the US and around the world (who are serving in expat positions, either as missionaries or military). But, as noted, our focus is moving more and more toward Belize.
Are there any topics about the diaconate that you would like to see covered in a book, but haven’t yet discovered one that does so adequately? I am still formulating my convictions in this area. But . . . I sense there is a relationship between—-a continuum and a discontinuum (if there is such a word!)—-between poverty and wealth, consumption and production, and, probably, many other terms. What bothers me: most “personal finance” education focuses on avoiding poverty, getting out of debt—-rejecting the bad. (Forgive me, I’m actually “thinking out loud,” here). What they don’t do—-at least as far as I’ve seen—-is teach to embrace the good. And so, what I am thinking is: in the same way that “the best defense is an offense,” and “we must think not only about relief but about development,” so, too, here. We absolutely must reach out with a charitable hand to those who find themselves in dire straits, but we must not only give them the fish, but teach them to fish. To quote the Apostle Paul: we must teach the one “who steals [to] steal no longer, but, rather, labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Eph. 4:28). That’s what the book (or, rather, likely, series of books!) I’m trying to write is all about.
Do you have any noteworthy ministry accomplishments to share with others here? Not that I can think of with respect to diaconal ministry. I am known more for my writing and editing. Besides Sonlight Curriculum, I am best known for the book I wrote and had published titled Dating With Integrity.
Why did you decide to become a site member? Primarily to learn, though I’m happy to share what little wisdom I may have acquired.
By way of example of what I am talking about: I was blown away by the Cost-Cutting Worksheet in Lesson 1 of John Livingston’s Bible-Based Finance course. As I read that worksheet, I realized that, though I have lived that life and, in a way, taught that way of life by example to my children (when we lived on less than $15,000 a year in Southern California, where our rent alone ate up half our income, and Christian school tuition for the first child ate up another third, and we continued to tithe on our gross . . .), I have never thought through—-so I could teach—-the practical realities of how to live faithfully and effectively at the low end of the financial spectrum.
John’s worksheet was eye-opening and a useful jolt to my system to wake me up to the fact that I need to speak to people at that end of the spectrum as well as those who may be more . . . Ready2Prosper. I need to help people escape the slavery of consumer debt before I attempt to teach them how to use debt as a tool for maintaining and producing wealth. I need to teach them the fundamentals of insurance—-not to mention life insurance—-before I start talking about how to use whole life policies for cash management. (Ahem! You have to have cash before you need to manage it!) . . .
I look forward greatly to what I will learn. I pray I will be able to use it effectively for the people I meet every day here in Belize . . . as well as for the thousands of children I hope one day to influence by whatever I finally publish through Sonlight Curriculum, Ready2Prosper, and whatever other non-profit agency, church, profit-making company, or other means by which God may enable me to pass such wisdom. . . .
