Invested with Purpose (Part 5): Miracles

What's in a name?

Something Art often says is, "if you're going to say you're a Christian or you operate a Christian organization, you had better act like it or change your name." He believes there is a lot of meaning to a name.

It's probably assumed that Timothy Plan was named after a key person in the company; however, that's obviously not the case as Art Ally is the founder. His wife, Bonnie helped him when he was trying to come up with a name for the new Christian based mutual fund. Art had a friend, Harold Reese that wrote a book called "Financial Bondage." In the book it had Scriptures about finance and several of the verses were from the book of Timothy. Here are the verses used that made them decide on the name "Timothy Plan":

Bonnie was actually the one that came up with the name for Art.

Since the beginning of Timothy Plan, they have always trusted in God. When asked the key to success for Timothy Plan, Bonnie says,

"Knowing Who's in charge. Every day, we know it's not our business. We are here to serve, and we've made a commitment that God provides, and we give." (pg 80)

If you're a Christian, are you doing your best to live up to that name?

Art's Testimony

Art Ally didn't grow up in a religious home; however, he did live in a house with good values and a good home environment. He felt something was missing in his life, but never really went into a church besides for weddings and funerals. That changed when he met his wife, Bonnie.

Both of their lives were changed when they went through this 30-day program at their church. It was the jumpstart to his relationship with God. In the book, he talks about the importance of spending time in the Word and focusing on a personal relationship with God. Art is a good example of having his personal relationship with God completely transform his life.

It's been mentioned before in previous blogs, Art and Timothy Plan faced some difficult challenges early on. There were many times that they ran out of money, but he kept trusting in God to provide. Looking back, Art says there are some miracles he saw that kept Timothy Plan alive:

God brings a money manager: the initial money manager they planned on using backed out at the last minute because they didn't like the abortion screen. At just the right time, God sent in another guy that they initially couldn't work with; however, he had recently changed firms. The timing of everything worked out perfectly, even though at one point it didn't look like they were going to have a money manager.
God writes a study guide: this was discussed in a previous blog about how Art realized Christians weren't educated in financial stewardship; therefore, he took the time to create a program to educate others. Art didn't have experience in this and says that the Holy Spirit is what helped him create this program.
God gives Art another plan: plans continued to change in the beginning as they kept running out of funds – during all this trusting in God to provide or they'd have to shut down.
Attracting managers with virtually no incentives: they hired a consultant to help them search for a new fund manager in order to expand Timothy Plan. They didn't have money to incentivize them with and they had the screening restriction. The consultant didn't think they would have any takers; however, they found 2 managers (one for each fund). The consultant said she'd never seen anything like that!

Timothy Fund was also audited a couple times in the first few years, which wasn't common. The first two times they had someone come in to audit them, they were clear that they didn't like that Timothy Fund was Christian. They tried to find faults to get them shut down. There was a lot of faith had during the beginnings of Timothy Plan!