Most People Go Pro In Something Other Than Ministry Profits & Prophets, Episode 3: Ben Ooms Also available on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube (video) Episode 3 runs the show backwards. Usually I’m talking to business people trying to live out their faith at work. Ben Ooms is a full-time campus missionary at Purdue who joined LinkedIn nine months ago and started thinking like a founder. (His title on there is literally “missionary at Purdue,” which is not a thing you scroll past.) His students intern at Google, Microsoft and Exxon over the summer. “They’re probably making almost half of what we do in a year during the summer.” Ben is the one discipling them about money. Purdue has fifty eight thousand students and, he says, the occasional Lamborghini in the lot. He’s twelve years into Cru but only got on campus this April, after a year of support raising. He asks students bluntly what they did with what they made. He never asks how much. He joined LinkedIn to find people to meet with while raising support. His job, it turned out, maps onto business more than he expected. The pitching, the cold emails, the pipeline. “I can relate a lot more to the corporate world, the entrepreneurs, than I thought I could.” The thing he kept coming back to is the handoff. He gets students for two to four years, and then “they leave the college campus and they go into your world.” He wants working believers to be the landing spot. His ministry partners give between 5 dollars and 750 a month. It goes into a Cru account, and salary, taxes and health insurance come out of it, so when less comes in than goes out, the paycheck is short. He’s still turned money down. A man who’d known him since childhood sat with him in Purdue’s Union, asked questions that felt like control, and wanted certain things taught. Ben said no. He has two kids, four and two. Highlights “I have a friend who might have been a freshman, going to a church plant, and they send around the offering basket. And he’s like, I don’t have much, but this is what I have. And he put in an Arby’s coupon.” “I know they’re going to be making money. I don’t ask how much, but I wanna ask them to trust the Lord with their finances too.” “It felt like there were strings attached, and I had to be like, thank you for the offer, but I don’t think this is best right now for you to give to our ministry.” “I only have students for two to four, maybe six years. And then they leave the college campus and they go into your world.” “I wanna be the bridge from campus faith to corporate calling.” If you’d rather skim * 00:42 Why a campus missionary joined LinkedIn, and the switch from getting to giving * 03:50 Twelve years with Cru, a wife who does the same job, and what the work actually is * 05:22 Fifty eight thousand students, twenty of them at his place each week for Nehemiah * 06:06 My question about needing money before you’re allowed to go serve God * 09:50 The Lamborghinis in the Purdue lot * 11:52 The Arby’s coupon, and the church that framed it * 13:54 What his students make in a summer versus what he makes in a year * 16:16 Me, my first paycheck, four digits, and no idea what to do with any of it * 19:43 Arrow prayers, and my complaint that it’s the right answer * 22:51 Support raising as seed funding, and pitching the greatest product ever made * 24:35 When the paycheck comes up short * 28:06 “Have you ever turned down support?” I was not expecting a story. * 31:00 His actual ask, and it isn’t money About Ben Ben Ooms is a campus missionary with Cru at Purdue, where he and his wife Hannah find spiritually interested students, share the gospel with them, and disciple student leaders one on one and in small groups. He graduated from Purdue, spent most of twelve years on staff in the South, and moved back to West Lafayette last year. Ten thousand freshmen arrive in three weeks. He’s asking for three things, in this order: people who’ll pray (he sends an update every one to three weeks with a prompt), people who’ll give, and people already working in a field who are willing to be a landing spot for a student after graduation. That last one is the new idea and the reason he’s on LinkedIn at all. * LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ben-ooms-with-cru/ * benooms.com Profits & Prophets is a passion project. No sponsors, no paid tiers, no guest fees. Just conversations I wanted to have anyway. Thanks for reading How to Make Less Money! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit randytseng.substack.com
