As the National Director of Kingdom Advisors in Canada, one of my goals is to bring Christian financial professionals into membership. With this drive for memberships before the end of the year, I have been talking much about the benefits. These include new study group content monthly, regular teleconferences, Core training to equip advisors with biblical financial advice and wisdom in practice management.

Last week, I had a conversation with a long time friend, Melvin, about his membership renewal and he talked at length about his 2-year-old granddaughter Isla. She was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, had recently been doing well after lengthy chemo treatment, but last week took a turn for the worse.

After more testing and scans, it was discovered she had two tumours on her brain. This past Thursday, just as Melvin was arriving home, his son Michael (also his partner in his practice) called saying,“Isla may not make it through the night.” Michael asked his Dad if he could call as many as possible to prayer. Within an hour, more than 100 had gathered to pray at the church. Isla did make it through the night, is now back on chemotherapy, and Melvin told me, the tumours are shrinking. This has been a roller coaster ride for them.

Back to his membership, Melvin said,“I just do not have the time right now to be engaged with Kingdom Advisors, but I would like to continue membership because I want to be connected to people who pray.” So the value Melvin feels he has received is through prayer support, not the tools and resources I was promoting, at least not right now.

It has made me realize that one of the greater values of Kingdom Advisors, or any organization for that matter, is Community. We can support one another, not just with great ideas, but also by simply being supportive of one another. Prayer is a means of connecting with a higher source and having at least two or three agree is truly important.

There are likely other members of Kingdom Advisors and other persons that we are presently in community with that are facing a similar challenge this Christmas. Let us pray one for another. I would like to take this time to wish everyone a blessed Christmas season. May the peace that passes all understanding be yours!