In a few weeks we will release a book on how Jesus taught his disciples to invest their time, energy, and money - something we call the Five Capitals. Here’s a story of how someone invested in the five capitals to see them grow so they could be a greater source of blessing to everyone around them.

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Dave and Kim Rhodes, along with another partner, founded a ministry to young adults called Wayfarer, which now functions as 3DM’s arm focused on youth and students (they do phenomenal summer camps, by the way). Dave and Kim now function as the U.S. Team Leaders of 3DM. Their story of starting Wayfarer is a story of investment and growth in the five capitals.

It all started at Palm Beach Atlantic University. We were a bunch of guys who were doing life together, seeking God together, and we were seeing God show up in remarkable ways. Though we didn’t have language for it at the time, we had essentially started a Missional Community, and the fruit of it was really sweet. It was a bunch of people living as a family, doing life together, seeing people come to Jesus and join us. It was awesome. When it was time to graduate, we asked the question, “Why does this have to stop? Who says this has to stop?” Again, although we didn’t have language for it at the time, we were experiencing an abundance of relational capital and questioning why people simply drop all the relational capital they accumulate in college because it’s the normal thing to do.

In the meantime, we were beginning to expand our little family on mission—we met a ministry partner and began to lead summer youth camps together. Again we had developed what was basically a Missional Community, an oikos—we traveled together, did life and ministry together. We built a friendship and eventually decided to go to seminary together (preserving relational capital instead of choosing to do these things individualistically, which is the normal way to do it). We moved to Birmingham, Alabama, for seminary, and eventually five or six of the other families we’d been doing life with came and joined us in Birmingham. We spent three and a half years there as an extended family on mission. We lived in the same apartment complex, doing life and mission together.

We came to the point of graduating, and another decision was upon us. What now? Again, the normal expectation is that everyone says their goodbyes and you go your separate ways, throwing away the relational capital. We decided to do something different. There were some opportunities locally but we felt called to start something.

So we decided to start something. We didn’t have any seed money, besides $2000 out of our own pockets. We took stock of where we had other kinds of capital we could build on, and for a number of reasons we felt like the Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, area was the place to start. We both had relational connections there (more relational capital), and it felt like God’s grace was going before us.

So we moved there, and before long, so did a few of the other families we’d been doing life with. We started Wayfarer in our partner’s parents’ basement (again, following the relational capital) and didn’t take a salary for nine months. We paid the bills because both of our wives got jobs with another local company where we had relational connections. It allowed them both to use their skills, but they got the jobs in the first place because of the relational capital we had with the owners.

By now we had leveraged a lot of relational capital to get this thing started, and now that we were moving, it was time to leverage our intellectual capital to grow the business. Our intellectual capital consisted mainly in an ability to write and speak. We actually had a heart to start a ministry for local 20-somethings, but we knew if we simply started there, we’d have to shut the whole thing down because 20-somethings didn’t have any financial capital, which is what we needed to pay the bills at the time. So we used our intellectual capital to create a business that developed curriculum and did communication at camps and other events. This eventually provided us with enough financial capital to enable us to do the local ministry among 20-somethings that we wanted to do.

As the business grew, we needed more staff. But again, we didn’t have any extra financial capital lying around, so we couldn’t exactly hire people in the normal way. So we turned again to our relational capital when we’d talk with people about coming to join us. “We have an opportunity here,” we’d tell people, “but no income. The opportunity isn’t primarily about financial capital, it’s about relational capital, and the testimony of our lives is that if you come and join us here as a family on mission, we as a family will make sure you get fed. We don’t have a job to give you—we have an opportunity to put in front of you.” The only way that makes any sense to people is if they can trust the relational capital to make the financial capital work.

We hired the next four or five people that way. They first moved to simply join the family, and in the process there was eventually enough financial capital to give them an official job. In the process we grew our business from a budget of maybe $20,000 a year (85 percent of which came from ministry gifts, and 15% from our self-sustaining efforts) to a budget of almost $750,000 a year (85 percent self-sustaining, 15 percent ministry gifts). And none of that came with any seed money. It was relational seed that we leveraged for an opportunity to leverage our intellectual capital that eventually resulted in enough financial capital to make ends meet and do the local ministry we felt called to do, investing spiritual capital in 20-somethings.

Of course there was lots of spiritual and physical capital invested along the way. As in all startup businesses, we all worked lots of hours, we prayed a lot, and constantly needed to rely on God going before us with his grace.

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If you’re interested in learning more about applying the Five Capitals to your discipleship life, check out Five Capitals Coaching!