← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Financial Freedom & Bold Vision: Rev. DeForest “Buster” Soaries on Breaking Barriers and Going Big
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- [00:01]
DeForest Buster Soares
You know, I had a contract to write a book for 18 years, and I would go away for three day retreats, you know, pen and pad and laptop, and couldn't write. I could not write a book. And what I discovered, Kevin, about my inability to write a book was that I really never believed anyone would read it. And so I had things to say, but in the back of my mind, there was this voice whispering to me, nobody's going to read anything you write. And for 18 years, for 18 years, that contract sat in my. In my office and I was incapable. It wasn't until I actually believed that if one person read the book, this was important enough to write that I was able to write the book. And now thousands of people, thousands of churches use, use my books. And so I want people to believe that they have something to offer. Aim for something big. That's why I like this podcast. Aim for something big that you can either do yourself or connect with other people to do. Because it's. It's ordinary people who did extraordinary things that have made this world what it is today and our nation what it is today.
- [01:14]
Kevin Gentry
Welcome to the Going Big podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week, I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to light. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube, or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think you're going to really be pleased with this conversation today. I'm already looking forward to it. I have been for a while. I've known the Reverend DeForest Buster Soares for about 10 years. And Buster, I've just been so inspired and impressed by the manner in which you look at people. You just have a fundamental belief in personal empowerment and a belief in people. And to me, I think it comes from your view that we've all been given these amazing gifts by God and we just need to figure out the best way to contribute them. Is that how you see the world? Just. Just lead us off. It's so great to be here with you today.
- [02:41]
DeForest Buster Soares
Well, first of all, Kevin, thank you for having me and congratulations on this very impactful Podcast and thank you for allowing me to be a guest and listen. Thank you for your friendship. I've been watching you from a distance at events, and I've watched the way you interact with people, the way you communicate. And I am just thrilled to, first of all, just the fact that we know each other and work together from time to time. So thank you so much.
- [03:11]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you. You are first class, buster.
- [03:14]
DeForest Buster Soares
I think more basic than theology, which we can talk about, more basic than how I was raised by my parents, is for me, the fundamental idea that life forms have a lot in common. I mean, just think about it. All life forms require some level of nurture. Many life forms are capable of reproducing. All life has some common elements. However, when you think about the Homo sapiens, when you think about the human, the human, scientifically, is known to be the highest life form. And so there are assumptions we make about ourselves that distinguish us from other animals, from horses, from cows, from plants. And it is precisely those features, those distinguishing factors that I believe create this focus on. On. On human capabilities. And since every human is different in one sense, but in a greater sense, we have more in common with each other as humans than we have with any other life form. And one of those common features is the ability to create, the ability to innovate, the ability to. To congregate and come up with solutions to different problems. I mean, look at the human experience and how far we've come. I mean, horses are basically the same as they were 10,000 years ago. A horse is a horse is a horse. But look at humans. Look at the difference between who we are today and who we were just 100 years ago. So that's what really drives my understanding of the human experience, human interaction, and therefore my responsibility for growth and development myself, and the potential we have as society, as families, as organizations to do likewise.
- [05:18]
Kevin Gentry
Well, this is the Going Big podcast, and we really want to focus on each person's potential. And I know you believe in everybody's potential. You've worn many hats in your life. And I'm going to try to cover a lot of the different roles you've played. But first, as both a pastor and a pioneer in the area of financial literacy, financial understanding, you've really brought those two areas together. Would you talk a little bit about how your organization D. FREE came about, what problem you're trying to solve, and how you've approached that you really are the country's best expert in this particular area?
- [06:03]
DeForest Buster Soares
Well, I don't know that I'm the best. But I think I may be the hardest working. You know, right after the year 2000, a number of things converged in my life. The first thing that converged was we built a new sanctuary. Our church grew from 800 members, and by the year 2000, I'd been there 10 years. We probably had two or three thousand members. And so we had to build a new facility. And the construction of that new facility created some financial pressures on the institution that we had not previously had. So that, that's thing number one. Thing number two was that by the time we got into the 21st century, the so called prosperity gospel had become normative, especially in black churches and throughout developing countries. When I was coming up, the Reverend Ikes of the world, if you will, even before him, the Elmer Gantrys, the guys that really used the pulpit as a hustle, they were always there. That element and that irk has always been there. But what is different, what had become different was they became mainstream. And all of the research indicates that even without naming it, there are people who have embraced what is commonly called prosperity theology in mainstream churches. So that was happening at the same time. And I, I built this new facility. It seats a couple of thousand people. We started worshiping online early, and so people would look in on the sanctuary and we resembled some of the mega churches. And I had this pressure institutionally to pay off debt and do other kinds of things. And at the same time, I have this unrest in my soul, in my mind, in my spirit, as I watched Christianity as I knew it have as its primary threat these prosperity preachers. And so by 2005, it was clear to me that we needed two things. One, I needed a personal, theological, institutional alternative to some of what I considered to be the scams in the pulpit. At the same time, I needed a healthy approach to increasing the revenue in my fast growing congregation, because people were joining the church, but they weren't committed to stewardship. And really, God really spoke to me and reminded me of my own background. You see, when I was in my 20s, Kevin, I was using credit cards as though they were income. I was paying last month's bills with next week's check. I was dressed up on the outside and messed up on the inside. And I had a discovery. My grandmother died when she was 81 years old. And when she died, she left me the first house that I owned. Now, mind you, my grandmother had six children. Her husband, after her sixth child, her husband had a stroke and could not work. She had no education. Her only skill was that she was a seamstress, she sold other people's clothes. She had no civil rights. She was a black woman in New York, you know, in the 1900s. And when she died, she died owning three houses, completely paid for. And I stood at my grandmother's grave. I was 31 years old. And I promised myself, I promised God, I promised my grandmother that I had to change my life. Here I was, I had education, I was a community leader. I had civil rights options, opportunities, and all I had to leave behind if I had died that day was credit card bills. And so I decided then to change my life. Took me about four years, but it started with getting out of debt. My journey, my desire, my passion to be, first of all, financially healthy enough to get married because I was too broke to get married. My commitment to have integrity as a minister. I was preaching tithing, but I was spending so much of my income before, before Cain, I couldn't, I didn't tithe in my own church. I was preaching tithing and not practicing tithing. And. And so the catalyst for me were my. Was my grandmother's death. So when you Fast forward to 2005, I recognized that my church members then were living the same way I had been living. And I just put together a program. It was culturally relevant, biblically based. It started with debt, because that's where I started. But it ended up with giving back. And so I put together a strategy. We kind of created a brand because, you know, by the 21st century, everything needs a brand. And we found that not only did the income of the church increase significantly in one year, but also when the great financial crisis came, 2007, 2008, our members had been insulated. They were paying off their mortgages, paying off their cars, paying off their student loans. And it was so phenomenal that CNN came along and did a 90 minute documentary right in the middle of the financial crisis on our church because they couldn't figure out what we were doing different than other churches in the country.
- [11:33]
Kevin Gentry
Wow, I had no idea. Now is D free. Are you still doing D free?
- [11:38]
DeForest Buster Soares
Oh, yes, sir. Every day of my life, I'm writing books, giving speeches, training churches. We're in about 5,000 churches around the country. With our curriculum, we're updating a lot of our content because the original book was written in 2010, it was updated in 2016, and now that we have artificial intelligence and we've got GrubHub and we've got Uber Eats, it's now time to update it and include a lot of the technology that we didn't have then.
- [12:07]
Kevin Gentry
Well, if somebody wants to find out more about Defree, can they find it online?
- [12:12]
DeForest Buster Soares
Oh, sure. We have a website. It's easy. D F R E E D free dot com. And Kevin, you know, I think you know this. The D, the D is it precedes free. And the free is short for freedom. And all freedom has two aspects to it. It's freedom from and freedom too. Whenever we strive for freedom, whenever we achieve a modicum of freedom, there's always a freedom from freedom too. So, D, free from a financial perspective, is this freedom from debt? You know, pay as you go. Don't use credit as though it's. It's income delinquencies. Americans spend millions, hundreds of millions of dollars a year just on late fees because we're disorganized. And in my life, I was just disorganized. I would pay things late. And you're paying 25, $35 every time you pay a bill late. So the first G is debt. The second is delinquency, and then the third is deficits. Deficit living means living above your means. Not having a spending plan, not having a budget. And this doesn't sound exciting, but Believe me, those 3Ds after having conquered them changed my life. When I started tracking my spending, using cash instead of credit. And now, of course, I use credit. I pay it off right away. I don't pay any interest. Having a budget, paying my bills on time, it was a lifestyle change. And that's why we don't really talk much about financial literacy. Because I was literate. I was just a fool. You can be literate and foolish at the same time. So once I was free from debt, delinquencies, and deficit, those are the three bad deeds. I was free to make deposits in a bank account. You know, most Americans today don't have $1,000 in case of emergency. Most Americans today are not saving sufficiently for retirement. So having a deposit in your own account, earning dividends on investments. Today I get a check every three months, and that check is larger than the paycheck that I had when I first started working as a young man. Because I now invest money, and the money works for me. And then deeds. When you own real estate, your name's on a deed. So we push home ownership. We want people to know you got to live somewhere. And although homeownership is not for everybody all the time, we teach our people that if you don't own a home, it shouldn't be because you don't know how or you don't understand it. It should be a strategic decision. So D. Free is a curriculum. It's a brand. It's a movement that focuses on getting away from the bad deeds, getting into the good deeds. And nothing gives me greater joy. I got an email today from a woman in Newark where the mayor and his wife use our program for citywide campaign for the women of Newark. It's called Newark Women Moving Forward. And we got an email today from a woman who went through our curriculum, and she said she is now completely debt free. What that means, Kevin, is first of all, she's not paying 18, 25, 28% interest to banks, so she had more disposable income. Secondly, what it means is that she can now save money. She can now invest money. She now can sleep all night because she's no longer restless, wondering if the bill collector is going to call. So it's a lifestyle change. It's, it's, it's, it's a value proposition. And we call it financial freedom more so than financial literacy.
- [15:59]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's a lot packed into there. I love the financial freedom aspect, too, and the way you constructed it all the freedom to, the freedom from. That's, that's awesome. And you. Not only for those great stories, but your just honesty and willingness to share this stuff. Who, who is Buster Sores? You know, Buster, I know that in, early in your life, you were a civil rights activist, a prominent and influential civil rights activist. Then you became this preacher of a, of a mega church. It's a big deal. There aren't that many big churches. What, what is the. What was that journey? What did you sort of learn from it? And, and if you would help us sort of understand where is the intersection of, of sort of social justice and faith today.
- [16:50]
DeForest Buster Soares
Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Not many people ask me about this part of my life or my work, quite frankly. And so I, I'm, I'm honored to have this opportunity. You know, it was April 4, 1968. I was a junior in high school, and I stopped by my grandmother's house to get some sweet potato pie. Right? That's where the life that I live today begins. And when I went into her house, I saw her sitting at her dining room table with tears in her eyes. And I'd never seen my grandmother cry before. She was literally my best friend. Now, this is not the same grandmother who left me the house. That was my father's mother. This is my mother's mother who was brought to New Jersey by a wealthy Family that she worked for in Virginia to continue working for her, for them, until she died. So she was a domestic worker. And she had lost two of her sons prior to that moment. And I watched her at her son's funeral, never shed a tear. Strongest woman I've ever met. Husband was an alcoholic, would not work. She raised eight children on her own. And so when I saw her sitting at her dining room table in tears, I was stunned. I forgot all about the pie that I went there to get. And when I asked her why she was sitting there in, in tears, she said, they shot Dr. King today. That didn't really help me understand because my grandmother was in the North. Martin King was in the South. My grandmother did not believe in marching. She was not an activist. My grandmother believed that if we just live right, pray hard, that God would make whatever changes America needed. And so I never knew her to even be an admirer of Martin Luther King. But Dr. King's death impacted my grandmother so much, I decided that I was going to find out everything I could about Martin Luther King. And I decided that whatever I found out, I was going to live the kind of life that was as impactful on somebody as Dr. King's life was impactful on my grandmother. And so I studied, I went to college, studied, left, college, studied. And about five years after the death of Martin Luther King, I decided that Jesse Jackson was the heir to the civil rights leadership and therefore was keeping the movement alive. And that's where I wanted to be. I had worked on local issues. I was an activist long before I met Jesse Jackson. I had a passion for justice and community, and so I was able to convince him. That's another story. But I was able to convince Reverend Jackson because I didn't know him. You know, I decided I wanted to work for him, but he didn't know me and I didn't know him. But I was able to convince him to hire me on his staff. And he did. He hired me when I was 24 to organize chapters of his new organization that he had formed after King died. And a year after he hired me, he made me the national coordinator of what then was Operation Push. I was running his organization when I was 25, and I loved it. It was a dream come true. As an activist, it was my mission, my passion, and my responsibility to ensure that people knew about the lingering injustices. You know, civil rights activism, non violent protests, was designed to bring attention to the injustices and bring attention to the inequities of the country. And, Kevin, while I was doing that work. Two things happened. One, my dad died. My dad died at 47. He went to the hospital for minor tests that back then, those tests required opening you up and putting you under anesthesia. And the doctor administered too much anesthesia with my dad and induced a heart attack. And he died. So now my dad is dead at 47, my mom is 44, I got an 8 year old sister, and I'm in Chicago working in my dream job. And I decided that I really needed to go home and help my mother raise my sister. But it was an easy decision also, because as I was working in civil rights and activism now in the middle of the 1970s, things had changed significantly. The drug problems of the 1970s had emerged as significant barriers to progress among black people. As racism was in the 1960s, the family was broken apart and divorce and single parent motherhood was. Was emerging as major social realities. And I began seeing my life and my mission is as really having to grow into a new role. First of all, I did not want to spend the rest of my life identifying problems, which is what activism was about. I wanted to spend the rest of my life solving problems. I wanted to become an expert in solutions. I wanted my funeral to include people who could testify that they were able to do something otherwise would not do. But they found a community that was left better because of my work. And so I decided that activism just making headlines was not my future. But I wanted to make some headway. And I didn't know what that meant. I really did not know. Because from the time I was 16, when Dr. King was killed, up up to the time I was about 25, 26, working for Reverend Jackson, that's all I knew. I knew activism, protest, leadership, all of that. And I really wandered intellectually and spiritually for a while because I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. But I knew what I was not going to do. I was not going to spend the rest of my life mad at anybody, Mad at white people, mad at rich people, just. Just mad. And when I went to Princeton Theological Seminary to do my master's degree, I met a man who had been the mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, can you imagine? I go from working for a student of Dr. King, who was Jesse Jackson, to now being connected to a mentor of Dr. King, who was the Reverend Samuel DeWitt Proctor, who at that time was the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. He literally took me under his wing. He helped me understand my theology, my strategy, my life. And he literally recommended me to become the pastor of First Baptist Church in Somerset, New Jersey, because he lived in Somerset, New Jersey. So Dr. Proctor really took all of my passion, all of my energy, all of my confusion, and guided me into the person that you met, the person that you know, someone who I believe is continuously focused on solutions, someone who connects with people that are committed to solutions. We met in the Stand Together community, and I was attracted there because Stand Together stands for solutions. And so today, I spend every day of my life doing something, working with people. I'm on corporate boards, I'm involved in writing, I give speeches, I'm mentoring young leaders. But all pursuit to a life committed to solutions and not simply being angry because of problems.
- [24:41]
Kevin Gentry
Well, I love that we all do, and I wish more people were solutions focused, but this is a great way to take. Take this conversation now. So then, for 30 years, you were the pastor of this very significant church. You've kind of retired from that role at least, but you're doing all these other things.
- [25:00]
DeForest Buster Soares
You.
- [25:01]
Kevin Gentry
I want to just, you know, give us a sense of. Of your day today. But. But also you. You mentioned something, and this has popped up in so many interviews I've had as a part of this podcast, and that is the importance of mentors. Would you comment on that as well? How does one find a mentor, and how can one be a mentor?
- [25:23]
DeForest Buster Soares
Yeah, let's not forget about your question of faith and social justice, because I.
- [25:28]
Kevin Gentry
Yeah, we got to come back to that. That's. That's the core of the question.
- [25:32]
DeForest Buster Soares
Okay, so let's start at the end. The mentoring. The first thing I think we should recognize about mentoring is that all of us know or have something that can be useful to someone else and what's important. And it's not always older people and younger people. There are times when a younger person can mentor an older person, depending on the strengths and the need. So I think mentoring essentially becomes a part of the human responsibility that we have a duty to serve each other. The human experience is such that none of us can maximize our own capabilities without support and assistance and guidance from another individual. Now, of course, the family is the core of that reality. That's why the family structure is so important, because our primary mentoring happens in the family setting. The family setting is like our spiritual, social, intellectual incubator, where we grow before we make our own choices. But then the extended family, the human family, offers strengths, skills, and support that come from afar. And so I. I find myself today because of my 30 years as a pastor. Because of my having worked in government, because I'm an entrepreneur, I find myself in a position to give advice and guidance and inspiration to people who are doing similar tasks. But I think one of the confusing things about mentors, Kevin, is that we fail to realize that no one person can mentor another person in every area. So I might be able to mentor someone in leadership, but not be able to mentor them in other areas. And so it's important to have mentors in our lives and to be a mentor, but to really define it and refine it such that no mentor is expected to be a comprehensive, all things mentoring personality. So that. That's the key. The key is Dr. Proctor was an intellectual mentor for me, a spiritual mentor, but in terms of my entrepreneurial skills, Dr. Proctor didn't help me at all. I've had to have business mentors, I've had to have intellectual mentors. My pastor really mentored and prepared me to become the pastor of a big church. If you've never worked in a big church, it can be rough going when you go from a very small church to a very large church or when your church grows. So that's the key to mentoring. And I think all of us need mentors. All of us should be mentors, but we should never consider one person completely adequate to mentor us in every area of our lives.
- [28:29]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's a great insight, by the way. I mean, I know that I'm a work in progress and I have so benefited from mentors. And maybe it's as I get older, I have mentors that are also younger. And you reference that and, you know, they can mentor me not only in areas like technology that I don't know and understand, but also in areas of humility. And it's. Thank you for sharing that I. Such an important, important insight. Okay. Okay. Let's go back now to the intersection of social justice and faith. Give us your thoughts on that and how you saw it over the years and how you see it today.
- [29:07]
DeForest Buster Soares
I'll start with a story. In the 30 to 31 years that I was at First Baptist, of course, being the largest church in the region, being someone with a civil rights background, I was often called upon for social protest, social action causes. Chief among them, of course, was when in two or three instances, we had a black kid, unarmed, shot by a white police officer, armed. And that almost always caused social upheaval, social protests. And. And what I did, because I was in such a position of influence, I decided as a pastor, as long as the prosecutors and the police Department and the mayors and the political structure were willing to work through those kinds of situations. There was no need to protest. You see, if an injustice is acknowledged or if a mistake is made, you don't want to protest simply to let the public know that, you know, protest is designed to get people to acknowledge things they otherwise would not acknowledge. And so I didn't. I didn't protest. And by the way, our neighborhood was never, ever the subject or the focus of national protest. So, I mean, just. Just consider this camp. And we're in. We're in a section of New Jersey run basically by white Republicans. A white cop shoots a black kid, and there's no Black Lives Matter. Don't show up. Al Sharpton doesn't show up. None of these people. Because we had built an infrastructure of cooperation. We built an infrastructure of relationships. And so when there was a shooting, the prosecutor would call me, or I would call the prosecutor. The prosecutor would come to church, explain to the congregation what steps were being taken. And so there was no need for protest. Except. Except. And this is where the faith part comes in. We had a black kid go to a gas station right around the corner from the church, shoot and kill the owner, who was Indian American, went across the street, shot and killed a restaurant owner who was Chinese American. And the Sunday after the shooting, we did not close the service in the sanctuary. We led a march from the church to the gas station. We prayed for the family. And what I told the congregation was this. If. If a white person had shot a black gas station owner, the whole community would want to march. And my faith, my. My faith in God, my understanding of religion, my belief in being a Christian, says that you have to be morally consistent, which means you can't be angry in one instance and ignore it in another instance. So we marched to the. The only march I led in 30 years was to that gas station to demonstrate empathy and compassion for the victims, but also to project moral consistency. That as a black pastor, a black leader, my faith required that I demonstrate my disdain for that crime the same way people would expect me to do it had it been a white cop shooting a black kid. And that's where faith and social justice intersection. I think one of the great failures today, one of the great flaws of social justice movements, is moral inconsistency. And so you can't be angry when the shooter is white and the victim is black, but not be equally angry when the shooter is black and the victim is black or the shooter is black and the victim is white. So our faith should drive us to some conclusions that create a moral consistency. That's one of the. And I'm sure a lot of people get confused about this, because a lot of the time you'll find people who are adamant about personal integrity, personal morality, and they ignore institutional injustice and institutional immorality. On the other hand, you find people who are passionate about institutional injustice, and they ignore personal morality. And, you know, listen, my faith says that righteousness and justice are two sides of one coin, that where there's no righteousness, you're not going to have justice. Righteousness is personal morality, and justice is institutional morality. And so I have had some discomfort, as you can imagine, from time to time, and I've even been rejected by certain of my friends who I believe have not been able to balance with integrity the call for personal morality and public morality. And that's where my faith and my understanding of social justice come together.
- [34:40]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Amen. Wow. That. Well, well said. Well, you are remarkably consistent, and consistency is tough. And I think that's why when we had that recent meeting and I mentioned how you had been a role model to Evan Feinberg, who's the founder of the Stand Together Foundation, I think that's where a lot of this originates. You mentioned another word, relationship. Would you comment? What. What is. What is relationship and why is it so important? You're very good at that. I think that's why you are among the reasons so well admired and respected. There's so many disparate people who look up to you. What tell us about relationship?
- [35:22]
DeForest Buster Soares
Well, what I've learned, Kevin, is that being good at relationships requires work, whether it's your relationship with your spouse, relationship with your children. My mother is 93 years old, and very few days go by without me speaking to her or spending time with her. So relationships take work. I decided some years ago that I would create relationship goals for the next year. There are people in my life that I haven't talked to in years, but we consider ourselves friends. And I actually make commitments, time commitments. I write lists of people that I need to remind myself and remind them that I love them, I respect them, I honor them, and I'm available to them. So I think relationships are fundamental to the human experience. It's an existential reality. Think about it. We're not born just randomly. We're born within a context. That's what the family is. And one of the tragedies of the breakdown of the family, the high divorce rate, high domestic violence rate, is that I think we have now a couple of generations that have very distorted views of relationships when people get married. When my wife and I got married, I put in my bio, but everybody puts in their bios. You know, he's happily married to Margaret Donna Soares. And then, you know, it occurred to me that that was dangerous. It was dangerous, first of all, because, you know, I'm a public speaker and I'd go places, people would read my bio verbatim. And when they, every time they read it, I said to myself, you know what? We're not happy all the time. So what I did was I changed my bio to say, he is permanently married to Margaret Dallasorius.
- [37:24]
Kevin Gentry
We are committed. That's terrific.
- [37:27]
DeForest Buster Soares
Permanent marriage. Sometimes up, sometimes down. We said, for better, for worse. And so the commitment is to make it permanent. But it takes work. And it means having relationships as a high priority in life. Relationship with our friends, relationships with, with our, with our families. And theologically, God made us. When the Bible says we're made in the image of God, that's a relational construct. That God didn't simply make us and then plant us somewhere and say, I'll see you later, that God's desire for humans is to be in relationship with God. But the question is raised, how can you be in relationship with God and you're not in relationship with, with, with people? You know, John said, how can you love God who you can't see, you don't love people you see every day. So relationships are core to my faith, they're core to my sociology, my theology. And I think the breakdown in this country can be mitigated, can be resolved. I think the, the, you know, all of this talk that we have about how divided the country is, if we're divided, the antidote for that is relationships. Race relations can be solved by relationships. The more we know people who are different, the more we know each other's stories, the more we share each other's experiences. When I was really, really, I mean, hot and big in social justice, social action, you know, protests, my Jewish friends would often criticize me because there would be anti Semitic events that would happen. I'd remain silent, listen. My position was, look, that's your problem. We have our own problem. We used to be slaves. So you deal with the Holocaust, I'll deal with slavery. And then I went to Israel. And while I was in Israel, I went to Vad Vashem and I saw the Museum of the Holocaust. It changed my life because I spent those moments feeling what I had never felt before. And I just think we need opportunities to Share each other's stories. Because if I know your story and you know my story, then the barriers that could otherwise divide us would. Would disappear.
- [39:52]
Kevin Gentry
Well, a lot of wisdom here, buster. Thank you very much. Well, you've been civil rights activist, social activist, pastor. Pastor for a long time. You've worked on this financial freedom today. What do you see as sort of the biggest challenges we face? And then what are you most excited about in terms of possible solutions?
- [40:18]
DeForest Buster Soares
Yeah. You know, the way you asked me that question reminded me of what I wanted to say few minutes ago. So let me say this first. So many people have said exactly what you said. You've been a pastor, you've been in government, you've been in corporate America. How do you wear so many hats? I don't believe in wearing different hats. I believe you wear one hat in different locations. So the key is for me to remain faithful and loyal to who I am in every venue so I don't change when I'm in government and then become a different person when I'm in corporate America and a different person in the pulpit. I'm the same buster everywhere I go. And what is that? That is someone attempting with every ounce of strength I have to be like Jesus Christ. Because if. If being human is our ultimate project, Jesus Christ as the embodiment of God is the ultimate human. And so to the extent that Jesus was loving and forgiving and humble, to the extent that Jesus taught lessons that were unique to him, that the greatest among you serve, then that's my life mission. That's the task. And what I would suggest as a solution is the more we are willing to embrace the Persona, the teachings, the character of Jesus, the less likely it is we're going to persist in having some of the problems, interacting with each other that we have now. Of course, you know, you have to make sure it's the right Jesus, because there are people whose greed is attributed to Jesus. There are people who are mean in the name of Jesus. There are people who are stingy in the name of Jesus. So you do have to be careful to take the whole Jesus and not the little slice of Jesus that you think justifies your behavior. And that's a spiritual endeavor. It's one that does require prayer and reflection and instruction. Because Jesus was tough, but Jesus was humble. What Dr. King called having a tough mind and a tender heart. Jesus said, be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves. So where I think we are today, especially in America, because when I travel to Africa, when I travel to the Caribbean, When I travel to Europe, what's still true, Kevin, is that people still look to America as the leader of the world. People admire America, People look up to America. Black people in Africa look up to black people in America almost to a fault. They mimic us, they love us, they. They just want to get to know us. Every time I go, it's just alarming to me. It's almost dangerous how much they look up to us. So I think this country needs more leaders in every sector that are willing to challenge us to live up to our creed. This self evident truth that all of us created equal, that God has given us these rights, and that these rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The principles upon which this country has been founded are the principles that are both. They're inspirational because they're aspirational, they're so lofty that we'll always be in pursuit, but they are so specific that we can measure ourselves against how well we're doing. And that's what we need in political leadership and religious leadership and corporate leadership. We should be comparing ourselves to the standards set forth in those principles which I believe are best, best personified by the man Jesus.
- [44:13]
Kevin Gentry
That's very nicely said. Thank you. Thank you, buster. You Speaking of Reverend King, he would be 100. We'll be celebrating his 100th birthday in a couple of years. I believe you're working on a project with Martin Luther King III and his wife on a way to celebrate that in a meaning. Would you comment on that?
- [44:35]
DeForest Buster Soares
Yes. Martin King III and his wife Andrea and his daughter Yolanda have embraced this idea of calling America to the vision of Martin Luther King, specifically around the beloved community. Dr. King's dream, as he articulated it, would bring America together such that we would be a community in love with each other. That the nation would rise above the historical differences and enter into a time when, when history and the world would assess us as being a beloved community. One way to do that is through acts of service. One way we get to know each other is through serving each other. One way we solve problems is by serving each other in, on, in various ways and on different levels. And so what Martin King has done, through his foundation, he and his wife and his daughter have captured this campaign called Realize the Dream. And the goal is to motivate and inspire people to do more acts of service so that by the time we celebrate Dr. King's, what would have been his 100th birthday, which is in 2029, that, that we would have 250 million acts of service. Not only happening, but registered, coordinated and measured in terms of the impact. And the National Football League, National Basketball association, many celebrities, many diverse organizations are signing up to be a part of this campaign, which simply means, in many instances, doing what you would ordinarily do or doing what you aspire to do, but doing it in collaboration with hundreds and thousands of other organizations to make a collective impact. So that's the campaign, and I'm helping out Stand Together supporting it. I'm on the board, as you know, of the Stand Together Foundation. And so both in that role and in my historic role of having a relationship with the King family, I was friends with Coretta King. I was mentor to Dexter King. I was host for Yolanda King in New York when she and Malcolm X's daughter actually had a theater group and they needed a place to rehearse. I've. Bernie's King priested my church. And now Martin King is. Is a friend. And we are. We're trying to do everything we can to help him.
- [47:07]
Kevin Gentry
Outstanding. And so that this is not something that's going to happen in 2029. It's happening now. It's building up. It's going to go through a long period of time. Is that what you're saying?
- [47:17]
DeForest Buster Soares
It's happening right now. It's being coordinated. It's being promoted towards 2029, when we can celebrate in America that because of this campaign, has reached a level of social, spiritual, and hopefully economic maturity that it otherwise would not have.
- [47:37]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Very nice. All right. Well, buster, this has been terrific. I like to conclude with two questions, the first of which is looking back now at your younger self. What advice would you give your younger self to do any differently than you did?
- [47:58]
DeForest Buster Soares
The advice I'd give my younger self, Kevin, would be the advice that a guy gave me, and I didn't accept it. There was a local official in my town who sang in a barbershop quartet in his spare time. He was a commodities trader on Wall street and very close to Richard Nixon. Right. So now, remember, I'm a civil rights activist, and I've got this Richard Nixon fundraiser asking me to lunch and sat me down to give me advice. But I went. I went and he sat me down and said to me, he said, listen, I really respect you. I disagree with you on everything, but I respect you because I think you're sincere. And because you're sincere, I'm telling you what I think you ought to do. You ought to teach your people about money, teach them about saving, teach about investing. That's what that's what you need to do. And he had this big box of, of booklets from, from Wall street sent to my office, a little community office. And he said, I really, I know you're sincere, and I really think that's what you ought to be doing. When I left that place, Kevin, I said to myself, this old conservative Nixonite is trying to get me to move, lead the movement and stifle my voice. And of course, 20 years later, when I wrote my book on, on finance and teaching people about debt, I autographed a copy and sent it to him and said, I said, you know, Dick, you gave me this advice and I did not listen. I just want you to know I'm listening now. So if I could talk to my 22, 23 year old self, I would say, save money now, Invest money now. Get insurance now, Buy a house instead of renting an apartment. I, I would really like, like I have with my sons, stop using those credit cards. It took me years of financial failure to come to my senses, and then it took me a number of years to recover from the mistakes I made. So that's the most important advice. Listen, I had God, I was a Christian, I was doing good work. I was just broke. And, and so I had everything else except, except the financial. A commitment to financial freedom and financial intelligence.
- [50:38]
Kevin Gentry
All right, the final question, because this is the Going Big podcast, and one of the objectives is just to inspire people, just to cast a big vision. We know in the Bible in Proverbs it says, where there is no vision, the people perish. You've. You've thought big and you've acted big. What advice would you give to people listening today to how to think about today and tomorrow?
- [51:04]
DeForest Buster Soares
You know, I'm not a joiner per se. I'm not one who just joins organizations and becomes a part of things. But I do think people today should find a cause. President George W. Bush used to always talk about finding a cause bigger than yourself, that we need each other. We need strong churches, we need strong political organizations, we need strong sororities and fraternities and businesses. And I want people to either embrace tasks that they can perform or connect with other people in groups that are doing something big. You know, I had a contract to write a book for 18 years before I could write a book. And I would go away for three day retreats, you know, pen and pad and laptop, and couldn't write. I could not write a book. And what I discovered, Kevin, about my inability to write a book was that I really never believed anyone would read it. And so I had things to say, but in the back of my mind, there was this voice whispering to me, nobody's going to read anything you write. And for 18 years, for 18 years, that contract sat in my office and I was incapable. It wasn't until I actually believed that if one person read the book, this was important enough to write and I was able to write the book. And now thousands of people, thousands of churches use, use my books. And so I want people to believe that they have something to offer and that they can either do it individually or connect with other people. But, but aim for something big. That's why I like this podcast. Aim for something big that you can either do yourself or connect with other people to do. Because it's. It's ordinary people who did extraordinary things that have made this world what it is today and our nation what it is today.
- [53:12]
Kevin Gentry
The Reverend DeForest Buster Soris. Look him up online, ladies and gentlemen. Check out his books. He's got, his podcast is on Sirius xm. He's got his programs. Just, there's a lot of stuff out there. We really so appreciate everything you do, and I look forward to continuing to work with you for a long time. Buster Soares, thank you so much.
- [53:35]
DeForest Buster Soares
Thank you, Kevin. You keep doing what you do because there's thousands of people are listening to your voice now and hearing what those of us who have been in small rooms have heard for years. So keep doing what you do because this is big. This is big.
- [53:49]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you very much. It's always good to be with you, Buster. Thank you.
- [53:52]
DeForest Buster Soares
Likewise. Thank you.
- [53:53]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.