“I was in my mid-thirties. I had three kids, a mortgage to pay and I got fired twice in the space of one year.” -Rich Stearns
[00:00:00] Rich Stearns: Tommy, one of my favorite quotes, and I don’t even know who said this originally, but it goes like this, never trust a leader without a limp. And what that is basically saying is that a leader who has only known success is not completely formed as a leader.
It’s often been said, we learn much more from failure than we do from success. It’s also been said that it’s harder to pass the test of prosperity than it is to pass the test of failure.
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[00:00:28] Tommy Thomas: Thank you for joining us for the 100th episode of Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas. And thank you to all the guests and listeners who’ve made this possible. My guest today is Rich Stearns, the President Emeritus of World Vision. I wanted Rich as my guest today to celebrate this milestone for the podcast because he inadvertently has played such a pivotal role in my career as a search consultant.
My former colleague, Rob Stevenson, and I conducted the search that brought Rich to World Vision as their President. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that for the next 10 years or so after Rich started at World Vision either Rob or I would receive at least one call a month and usually more from a nonprofit organization with the question.
Were you the guys who brought Rich Stearns to World Vision? We would respond, yes. Their next comment would be something like, we need a new CEO. Can you bring us somebody like Rich? So, in many ways, the good work that Rich did for world vision was a launching pad for what is now JobfitMatters Executive search.
I have a lot to be thankful for. Let’s pick up on the conversation I had with Rich.
So let me give the listeners a little bit of context for how I know Rich. It was the summer of 1997. It was a hot July afternoon and I get a phone call from a friend in Los Angeles saying, did you know Bob Seiple is retiring and World Vision is putting out an RFP for the search? And I said, no, I didn’t know that.
And he says you need to bid on that search. So, I called my colleague up in Minnesota, Rob Stevenson. And oddly enough, he had received a call that morning from a friend of his in Minneapolis that said, did you know Bob Seiple’s retiring? And you need to bid on that search. Rob and I put our material together and we submitted a proposal and lo and behold, we got accepted.
And as Rob tells the story, we rejoiced for about 10 minutes and then we asked ourselves, what have we gotten ourselves into here? So, Rich, I don’t know if you’ve heard that story, but that’s how we got into it. Maybe tell us a little bit about your initial thoughts when Rob first called you.
[00:02:45] Rich Stearns: It was actually a funny story, before that, Tommy, that just shortly after that search was begun and you guys were selected, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked at World Vision and was actually my donor rep. I was the CEO of Lenox China at the time, and he was my major donor representative and also a good friend. We went back quite a few years and he said to me, Rich I’ve been praying this last week because Bob Seiple announced his retirement.
And I’ve just been praying for World Vision because I really want the organization to find the right successor to Bob and this, that, and the other thing. And he said, but something really strange happened this morning in my quiet time. As I was praying, he said I don’t know how to say it, but to tell you that the Holy Spirit told me that you’re going to be the next President of World Vision.
Your friend Rich is going to be the next President of World Vision. And I laughed out loud. I said, that’s ridiculous. I said, I’m selling fine China to the wealthy, Bill. I don’t know anybody on the World Vision Board of Directors. And besides, I’m not available, interested, or qualified to do the job. But other than that, I’m a perfect candidate.
That was almost a year before. I actually eventually took the job and it’s quite an amazing story overall and the way God used you and Rob as well.
[00:04:12] Tommy Thomas: That was the first time we’d ever put an ad in the Wall Street Journal and a trustee on the World Vision Board said we need to advertise in The Journal.
And we did. And as I remember, maybe your HR guy, he clipped that and showed it to you.
[00:04:26] Rich Stearns: I had a VP that worked for me at Lenox, and he sent me a handwritten note and it basically said, Dear Rich, I was reading the Wall Street Journal today and I saw this ad and it was a little, one column ad president for World Vision.
And he said, I read this ad and it sounded like you and I just wondered if you had seen it. And then he said, P.S. This was really a dumb thing to do, to send a want ad to the CEO of my company. I hope you don’t leave. You’re a great CEO and please ignore the fact that I was looking at the want ads.
And so anyway, I saw that ad and it sent a shiver up my spine because, months earlier, my friend, Bill had made this prophecy that I was somehow going to become the President of World Vision.
[00:05:11] Tommy Thomas: When Rob called you, do you remember your thoughts or feelings?
[00:05:15] Rich Stearns: Yeah, I spent a good part of the call telling Rob that I was not qualified for the job. It was a big Christian organization that focused on global poverty. I knew nothing about global poverty. I had never been to Africa. I had never done any fundraising. I had no theological training to work at a Christian organization, no MDiv degree, or anything like that. And for heaven’s sake, I was selling fine China to the wealthy.
So, I just said, I just seem like a terrible candidate for this job. And by the way, Rob, I’m not really available either.
[00:05:54] Tommy Thomas: And Rob prevailed, he stayed with you and ultimately you did accept it. How have your feelings changed over 22-23 years now?
[00:06:04] Rich Stearns: As I got further into this process with Rob, very reluctantly, I was the runaway bride, if you remember that movie but, this was a job I hadn’t sought. I didn’t want. I was actually somewhat terrified. I hope they don’t pick me because I would be a complete washout in that job. I would fail. I don’t have the right experience for it. In retrospect, those next 20 years at World Vision were the best years of my life.
And I learned a huge lesson about trusting God for the outcome. When God calls you, if you listen to His call and you heeded His call, he’ll catch you. He’ll travel with you. One of my favorite quotes is from William Sloan Coffin, who was once the President of Yale many years ago, and he said, I love the recklessness of faith.
I love the recklessness of faith.
First, you leap. And then you grow wings.
First, you leap. And then you grow wings. And that’s a little bit of what it’s like to answer a call from God. First, you leap. God wants your obedience. And only then do you grow the wings to fly. And you can look at people in the Bible like Moses or David or Peter. They had to leap in faith, take a leap of faith, and then God provided what they needed for the task at hand.
[00:07:21] Tommy Thomas: I want to change over to your time at World Vision, but before we go there take us back to your childhood and tell me what was it like growing up in the Stearns household?
My dad was an alcoholic and on his third marriage.
And when I was about ten that marriage failed.
[00:07:29] Rich Stearns: Tommy, I had a pretty rough family background. Neither of my parents went to high school. My mother did a couple of years of high school.
My father dropped out of the eighth grade. My dad was an alcoholic and on his third marriage. And when I was about ten that marriage failed. My parents divorced and the bank foreclosed on our house and my mother, my sister and I were kicked out and had to find an apartment to rent.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and as a little boy, my world fell apart when I was about ten years old.
[00:08:04] Tommy Thomas: I suppose there would be a happy memory from that. What would be your best memories of childhood?
[00:08:10] Rich Stearns: First of all, that I survived it which is for God’s grace. I had an understanding at a pretty early age, 12 or 13. I had an older sister that helped me a little bit, but she basically said, look, our escape route from this lifestyle is education. And if you can get good grades and you can get into a good college, your life doesn’t have to turn out like our dads, you could really make something of yourself and it’s all about education.
And that was my focus starting in maybe junior high and through high school. And, I have to say, my childhood, other than the family issues, I had a pretty normal, happy childhood. We lived in a little suburban community, went to a good school, I had good teachers who believed in me in many cases.
I had a good group of friends who came from families whose parents were professionals and more stable families. And I’ve spent a lot of time at other kids’ houses, with their families. And so anyway, I think the community somewhat compensated for the problems that I had at home.
[00:09:20] Tommy Thomas: When you came out of high school, how did you make your college decision?
[00:09:22] Rich Stearns: That’s also a funny story. So, my best friend first of all, when I was in junior high school and I wrote letters to all eight Ivy League colleges asking for their catalogs, which was pretty presumptuous.
But my sister told me the best colleges of all are Ivy League schools. And there were eight of them. One of them, Cornell University, was just 50 miles from my home in Syracuse. And at that stage in my life, the biggest dream I had was maybe I could go to a school 50 miles away, and I could drive there, right?
And so, in my senior year of high school, I told my mother, I really think I’d like to apply to Cornell University. And she just burst out laughing. She just said that’s ridiculous. How are you going to pay for Cornell University? She said, I don’t have any money and your father’s a drunk and he’s not going to help you.
And you can’t go to Cornell, and I said I don’t know Mom, but I’m going to find a way. I’ll get scholarships. I’ll do something. That’s not the way you want your parent to encourage you when you’re making a big decision. I did the application on my own and sent it in.
It was the only college I applied to. And not only did I get in, but I got a scholarship and then I got another New York State Regent Scholarship. And this buddy of mine who also went to Cornell, we ended up going together. And he was my roommate freshman year. He’s still my best friend. We’re still in touch all these years later.
So, getting to Cornell was a huge step for my life and that really opened all the doors that came after that in terms of further education and job opportunities. And I guess you could say I successfully escaped my childhood situation and found a way to overcome it.
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[00:11:05] Tommy Thomas: What’s something that people are always surprised to know about you?
[00:11:11] Rich Stearns: Often people are surprised to know about my family background, right? Because when you graduated from two Ivy League schools, people think you must’ve been born on third base or born with a silver spoon in your mouth. And that wasn’t the case for me. But I think today one of the quirky things about me is I collect comic books from the 1950s and 60s. So you wouldn’t think I was a comic book collector but for some reason, they bring back a lot of memories of my childhood because partly growing up they were a form of escapism for me.
I could escape from my crazy world by looking at superheroes like Superman and Spider-Man and fantasizing about a different kind of world where the good guys always win, and the bad guys always lose. And so anyway I have quite a collection of comic books.
[00:12:01] Tommy Thomas: Successful people are asked all the time, what makes you successful? I’d like to frame the question a little differently, and that would be, what is a factor that has helped you succeed that most people wouldn’t know about?
[00:12:14] Rich Stearns: This also relates a little bit to my family background, but I understood as a teenager that I didn’t have a safety net, right? So I was either going to make it on my own or I was not going to make it, but I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I didn’t have family wealth. It wasn’t like I could move back in necessarily with my parents. So when I got to Cornell, I just thought I’ve got to succeed or die. It’s like graduate or bust because, in fact, I remember one summer I was driving a taxi some of the summers during Cornell and even when I was in business school, the summer before business school.
And there was another college kid my age driving a taxi with me to make money. And that Fall he decided, I’m not going back to college. I’m making pretty good money driving a cab, and I’m just going to stay driving a cab. He said, you ought to think about it, Rich. And I said, my dream is that someday I’m going to ride in the backseat of a cab because I saw that as something rich people did. They wrote in the backseat of cabs. I’d never ridden in the backseat of a taxi. So, just understanding that I didn’t have a safety net and that, I had to make it or bust motivated me. Now, I think later in my career, Tommy, the success factor for most leaders, I think, is the ability to get along with people to win their trust and respect, to motivate people around you who are part of your team, to treat people the right way and develop a group of people that respect you for your ideas.
And those people are very helpful in your career, ultimately, because if you’re successful managing those people, you’re probably going to do pretty well in your career.
[00:13:58] Tommy Thomas: Most of us, if we’ve been around very long, we’ve had our mettle tested two or three times some of us come out better than others. Can you share with us a time when you had your mettle tested and how you came out of it?
[00:14:09] Rich Stearns: I’m quite proud of this accomplishment. Most leaders can’t say this, but I got fired twice in the space of one year, early in my career. It’s a long story that I won’t tell, but being fired twice was devastating.
I was in my mid-thirties. I had three kids, and a mortgage to pay,
and I got fired twice in the space of one year.
I was in my mid-thirties. I had three kids, and a mortgage to pay. And of course when you’re fired from a job, so much of your identity is wrapped up in your title and where you work, what we do. It can just be very devastating when that is kicked out from under you, not to mention the financial insecurity and things that go along with that.
God actually used that in my life to really deepen my faith and kind of drive me back to him. If I’m honest with myself, I would say in the first 10 years of my career, I was very successful. I became a CEO by the age of 33 and everything I touched seemed to turn to gold. And I thought, wow, this is sweet.
This is going to be a great life. I’ve made it. And now I’ve made it to the top of this company. And then all of a sudden, the winds changed. I got fired and found another job. I got fired from that and then found myself totally derailed. But I think what God was trying to do is say, Rich, I’m going to take you out of the game and sit you on the bench.
The coach needs to do a little work with you. I think what was happening is I was forgetting that my first job is to be an ambassador for Christ in the workplace, that’s really my calling. That’s the calling of every Christian. It’s from II Corinthians 5 where Paul says, we are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God is making his appeal through us.
And so, wherever you work, whatever you do, if you’re a follower of Christ, you’re supposed to be His ambassador. And the other job you have is really your cover job, right? It’s almost like you’re undercover and whatever you do, you might be a professor, you might be a businessperson, or a teacher. And what God taught me over the course of those two years, I was unemployed for about a year looking for a job, and there’s no more helpless feeling than being unemployed and hat in hand, basically asking people if they’d consider hiring you. You have no power. All you can do is make phone calls and apply for jobs, answer want ads, those kinds of things.
I think what God was really teaching me is to get your priorities straight. And when you’ve done that, I’ll put you back in the game. And there was this memory from my childhood catechism classes. I grew up Catholic and we had to memorize the answer to this question, why did God make me?
And the answer was to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world. And it dawned on me, it was like a flash of insight, that’s what I’ve been missing. Wherever I work, my job is to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him in that place and I can do that being unemployed, I can do that as a taxi driver, or I can do that as a CEO. But wherever I am and whatever I’m doing I can try to know God better, to love Him and serve Him in this world and that’s what I took with me into my next job, which was at Lenox China.
[00:17:20] Tommy Thomas: Thinking back early in your career, who was the first person that saw leadership potential in you and maybe set you on the track?
[00:17:30] Rich Stearns: I’ll talk about two different people. The first one was a negative influence. My first job was with Gillette out of business school, Gillette in Boston, and I was in sales administration analyzing, 30 cent coupon promotions and things like that and I wanted to get into the brand management marketing side of things.
And so I worked with HR to set up some interviews and basically, it all came back that says, you’re not cut out for this. You’re not cut out for marketing. And I’ll never forget the HR VP said, marketing is a young man’s game and you’re already two years behind, and I said, I’m 25. I said how young do I have to be?
I’m 25 years old. I’m too old? And he said we don’t think you have what it takes. You can have a great career here in sales, but we don’t think you have what it takes for marketing. And of course, I said I got an MBA from the Wharton Business School in Marketing. It’s what I really want to do.
So, he was just this negative voice. You can’t do it. You’re going to fail. A few months later, I applied for this job at Parker Brothers Games, which was an entry-level marketing assistant job. And I went in to resign and he told me, you’re making a big mistake. You’re going to fail at that and you’re going to regret this decision.
So anyway, off I went to Parker Brothers the next week, and seven years later, I was the CEO of Parker Brothers having risen through the marketing organization to do every job from vice president to executive vice president and into the president’s job. So I left this negative guy and my first boss at Parker Brothers was an encourager.
He was a guy that said, you can do this. You can do this. He gave me assignments and he said, I trust you, you can do it. And he just believed in me. He sent me to New York to shoot TV commercials by myself. I’m 26 years old. I’m managing a director in an ad agency and the actors on stage, on set, and I’m shooting TV commercials of my own.
So he caused me to really believe that I could do it and that made a huge difference in my motivation and my outlook.
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[00:19:27] Tommy Thomas: What’s the most ambitious project you’ve ever tackled?
[00:19:30] Rich Stearns: I can think of a few. When I was at Parker Brothers, think about this. It was a hundred-year-old board game company we all know, Monopoly, Clue, Sorry, Risk, those games. We used to jokingly call it tortured cardboard.
We’re in the tortured cardboard business. They used to be called parlor games back in the 1890s. When nobody had television or radio or anything like that. And I had this idea to get the company into video games. And so, long story short, I had to sell the senior management. Remember I’m in my twenties.
And I had to sell the senior management – don’t think of us as a board game company, think of us as a home entertainment company. In the future, games are going to be played on video screens. And these were the early days, the early Atari games. And so I persuaded them to give me a shot at it.
And again, long story short, within 18 months, I had hired 180 people. Engineers, software designers, game designers, technicians, marketing people, hired a whole separate sales force. And we doubled the revenues of a hundred-year-old company in about 18 months to two years. So Parker Brothers sales went from $125 million, I’d say in 1980 to $250 million by the end of 1982.
It was a huge challenge and pretty amazing. And that’s ultimately how I ended up being promoted to CEO. But I would mention World Vision though, as well. So early on at World Vision as the new guy, I saw what the AIDS pandemic was doing to children and families in Africa.
And it was largely unknown in the United States. AIDS was a stigmatized disease of the homosexual community. Christians had wanted nothing to do with AIDS. And when I told my marketing team at World Vision that I thought we needed to really embrace this AIDS crisis, raise a lot of money and help these people. There were 13 million orphan children in Africa because of AIDS and many widows and lots of grandmothers that were raising their grandchildren because their parents had both died.
My marketing guy said, our donors won’t give to this.
We’re a G-rated ministry and AIDS is an R-rated issue.
This is about human sexuality and Christians are not interested in this.
And my marketing guy said, our donors won’t give to this. We’re a G-rated ministry and this is an R-rated issue. This is about human sexuality and Christians are not interested in this. In fact, he did a Barna survey to prove that he was right. And I think that survey showed that only 3% of evangelical Christians said they would definitely be willing to help children that had been orphaned by AIDS. And I said we’re going to go there anyway we’re going to do it anyway, because it’s the right thing to do. And God help us if we remain silent, in the face of this huge crisis in Africa. And so, we did. We went after it and it was a huge challenge because I had to convince my own people to do it.
My own team didn’t want to go there, and they were the first people I had to convince. And for about the next five years, every speech I gave, every person I talked to, it was about HIV and AIDS in Africa, what it was doing to children and families, and how World Vision was going to help. And I think we raised more than half a billion dollars over those years to respond to the AIDS pandemic.
[00:22:46] Tommy Thomas: It’s been said that most of us learn the most from our failures. And so, my question is, if that’s the truth, why are we all so afraid to fail?
[00:22:54] Rich Stearns: Tommy, one of my favorite quotes, and I don’t even know who said this originally, but it goes like this, never trust a leader without a limp. And what that is basically saying is that a leader who has only known success is not completely formed as a leader.
It’s often been said, we learn much more from failure than we do from success. It’s also been said that it’s harder to pass the test of prosperity than it is to pass the test of failure, and that prosperity can ruin people in many ways. And we all know how that can happen. You see it with Hollywood movie stars and other people that have risen to high positions but have a great fall ahead of them because of their arrogance and their pride.
But failure hurts, failure forces us to face our own shortcomings and limitations. But when we face our shortcomings and imitate limitations, we become more whole as people and more whole as leaders. We have more empathy for people that have failed, maybe people in the future who will work for us, who have failed at something or made a bad decision.
It makes us humbler as leaders and much more sympathetic to other people that are struggling at a particular point in their life. So, when I came back from being fired twice, I was a much more empathetic leader than I had been before. I was much more aware of the people around me and the struggles they might be having.
And much more aware of my role as a leader in trying to help them succeed, and help them overcome some of their shortcomings. And so yeah, I think failure is, it’s trite to say, but it’s really character building and an important step in a leader’s development I believe.
[00:24:43] Tommy Thomas: Sticking with that thought, we look across the landscape and we see a lot of leaders who have fallen and went down a wrong track. What do you think is the most dangerous behavior that you’ve seen derail leaders’ careers?
[00:24:56] Rich Stearns: I’d mention a couple of things. I think one is pride and arrogance, right? You get too big for your britches. You’re bigger than life. We see this in some of the mega-church pastors that have failed, right? They’re surrounded by fans who adulate them. Maybe they’re surrounded by staff who are always praising them. Every word that comes out of their mouth is being praised and it can go to their head if you don’t have an accountability group or if you don’t have your feet rooted on the ground and you can start to get into riskier behavior and you start to think you’re invincible and nobody can touch you. So I think that kind of arrogance can be part of it. This is related, but it doesn’t always come with fame. I think leaders who become, I guess I’d say a lack of integrity, It’s if you start as a leader.
I’ve seen leaders who go down this path of losing their integrity, starting to do shady things, telling lies in the workplace, and playing office politics in a negative way. Saying bad things about their coworkers.
Bending the truth or fudging the numbers or, telling the boss what he or she wants to hear instead of the truth. I’ve seen leaders who go down this path of losing their integrity, starting to do shady things, telling lies in the workplace, and playing office politics in a negative way.
Saying bad things about their coworkers and man, integrity is like an anchor. Partly because I was a Christian, but my non-negotiable as I was coming up through the ranks is I was always going to tell the truth to my boss, to the people I worked for, to the people that worked for me, that what you saw was what you got.
I was never going to deceive anybody. I was never going to hide anything. I was just going to be very transparent about the way things really were, whether it was the sales numbers or the market share or whatever it was. And when you commit to that, when you commit to that integrity, both relationally and in terms of the way you speak and the things you say, it’s like an anchor that keeps you rooted in the right place.
It keeps you rooted. Yeah, that’s often said if you don’t tell any lies, you don’t have to remember what lies you told. If you always tell the truth, you never have to get your story straight because you’re not deceiving anybody and people trust you. I worked for family-run companies, Parker Brothers, when I started was still run by Mr. Parker. And then I went to work for Lennox and that was owned by a family, the Brown family in Kentucky. And when you work for a family-owned company, it’s their money, right? It’s their money. It’s their company. And they put the highest value on integrity in their leaders because you’re not just messing with some shareholder’s money, you’re messing with my family’s money.
My family’s legacy. And so, they put a very high value on integrity. And I learned a lot from the culture of those companies.
When you work for a family-owned company, it’s their money. It’s their company. And they put the highest value on integrity in their leaders because you’re not just messing with some shareholder’s money, you’re messing with my family’s money.
[00:27:44] Tommy Thomas: At what point in your corporate career did your Christian life begin to grab hold and inform you?
[00:27:52] Rich Stearns: I would say right from the beginning. I had a sense right from the beginning that I was a Christian.
I used to put a Bible on my desk. I wouldn’t be an undercover Christian, so the people would know. I always think it’s helpful for people in your workplace to know that you’re a Christian because that way you’re not as tempted to get involved with the dirty jokes and the workplace behavior that might be inappropriate the way you talk about people or to people.
And if you have a Bible on your desk and people know you’re a Christian, it keeps you honest, right? These people know I’m a Christian. They’re watching me. And I need to conduct myself in such a way that I don’t bring shame to the Lord, right? So I always had a sense that I wanted to be a person of integrity in the workplace and that somehow would reflect positively on my faith and the Lord that I served.
And might lead to conversations about faith where, somebody might say, hey, what’s different about you or, tell me more about your church and those kinds of things that happened over the years. So those, I think from very early on, I did say a few minutes ago though, that by the time I got to be CEO at 33, my work was so all-consuming, it was just an all-consuming thing that I was beginning to compartmentalize my faith.
It was still there, but it wasn’t the first thing I thought about when I got up in the morning. It was like, I got to get to work. I got to do this. I got to do that. I’ve got to accomplish these things. And that’s when, as I say, the Lord took me out of the game, put me on the bench, and said, hey, we need to get our priorities straight here.
Are you willing to put me first in your life? In fact, my leadership book, Tommy, that I wrote a couple of years ago the first real chapter is about surrendering as Christians. As leaders, our first job is to completely surrender our careers and our lives to the Lord. And once we’ve surrendered our career to the Lord, then it’s his to do with as he pleases.
And we’re there to just be good ambassadors to serve him, whether our career goes up or down or sideways, we can still be a good ambassador for the Lord.
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[00:30:06] Tommy Thomas: I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Rich as much as I have. I’m always amazed to learn about the early years of someone’s life and how things turn out in the end. Next week we will continue to explore Rich’s leadership journey. He’s been very candid and transparent in the conversation thus far. That will continue next week.
“My first boss at Parker Brothers was an encourager. He said, ‘You can do this.’ He gave me assignments and he said, ‘I trust you, you can do it.’” -Rich Stearns
Links and Resources
Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas
Books by Rich Stearns:
Lead Like It Matters to God: Values-Driven Leadership in a Success-Drive World by Richard Stearns
Books by Rich and Reneé Stearns:
God’s Love For You Bible Storybook by Richard Stearns & Reneé Stearns
He Walks Among Us: Encounters with Chris in a Broken World by Richard Stearns & Reneé Stearns
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