Faith Based Journal june - july 2012
Inspire, Inform & Educate
62nd Edition
INSIDE
The Woman Who Washed Jesus’ Feet: A Framework for a Faithbased Approach to HIV/AIDS
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Independent Insurance Professionals
By Minister Joe Collins AIDS is the leading cause of death among young African Americans between the ages of 25 and 44...
PAGE 64
Barbara Walker-Green, President BLG Financial and Insurance Services A MATHFUL GOD? By Shawn McEvoy That said, have you ever looked at the face of a calculator and marveled at how completely God is involved in all of those functions? PAGE 65
Barbara Walker-Green Changing lives Financially One Dollar at a time By Sharon C. Jenkins, Contributing Writer
The Need for Authentic Teaching: Is The Black Church Breeding and Bleeding Blasphemy? By Victoria D. Green It is now the time that we honor and obey the very words of Jesus by articulating, illustrating and facilitating the Love of God in an excellent way in all that we do. PAGE 66
Now That the “Weight” is Over! By Chana Kurtz So many times when we see or hear about the “weight” being over we see it as “wait.” PAGE 68
B
arbara Walker-Green knew at an early age that she was called to help others. It started with her mother, who after her father died had to care for her and her siblings. She decided to go to work cleaning houses for people on the hill. Barbara went to work with her one day and found her mother asleep and exhausted as a result of the tremendous workload she was under. That day she convinced her mother that she was better than her current station in life and she prepped her for employment and assisted her in getting a better job. She brings that same “mother wit” to her mission to empower congregations financially. I have the privilege of sharing with you
an interview I did with Barbara Walker-Green, President of BLG Financial and Insurance Services Corporation below. Sharon: What is your mission in regards to finances and our local community of churches? Barbara: One of the biggest reasons why I am so motivated to do what I am doing and focus on the faith-based community is because our communities are so grossly underserved when it comes to finance and financial literacy. And I have seen it throughout my career. It shows up in so many ways, because of our increasing joblessness, our lack of retirement planning, and appropriating the proper amount of retirement funding. And just in general, our economic situation
in this country. Most of it is due to a lack of communication. So I was motivated a long time ago to start my own practice. I use to work for companies in the financial industry and I have a pretty well rounded knowledge of financing when it comes to handling financial analysis and now investing. So I am able to assist an individual in making financial choices from various different angles. And my motivation to get into the business again and the number one reason were to bring this knowledge and education to the African American Community. Again we are so lacking in that area and one of the best ways to reach us is through our churches because many of us are extremely
faithful to our churches. So I said what better way to reach out to the community than through the churches. Now one of the things about that is that I realize that in many of these churches there are already financial professionals ahave been blessed and fortunate enough to reach very high levels in this business, especially as an African American female. I am probably in the top 1% and that’s very rare because this is a male dominated industry, as we all well know. One of the reasons, one of the things I’ve found in my rise, is that I struggled tremendously when I first started. I mean I didn’t start right out of the gate of success. I went through a lot of challenges and a lot of changes. I saw a lot of