Why are you so disappointed, Dave? Didn’t you say it’s not about the building but what happens inside the building?
The next question God asked convicted me even more:
Isn’t what happens outside the building more important than what happens inside the building?
The reason this question messed with me so much was because I couldn’t honestly answer it.
In a gentle and simple manner, I heard God answer this question with another.
Dave, what would the church look like if it weren’t confined to a piece of land?
It was like God was speaking Martian to me. I had no idea what He was talking about. I had been trained to build the church on a huge property so we could continue growing. What now? We had campuses in the United States and globally, but it still didn’t seem enough. This constant quest for growth and numbers was like Groundhog Day, or a song playing on an infinite loop. The adding of sites and services could go on forever. I eventually told my staff I didn’t want to be a pastor anymore. It got so bad, I started saying the same thing during Sunday messages: “I don’t want to be a pastor. The only reason I’m doing this is out of obedience.” My heart wasn’t in it. But the people kept coming. It was odd—it didn’t matter what I said, the church kept growing. They said, “Man, Dave is so authentic.” But I felt like I was authentically dying.
It would take some cows and a City of Angels to speak to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY Beyond the Uniform
Dave, I think you’d be a great commodities trader. You like risk. You have a global perspective. You can process data and you’re not afraid to make a call. We can make a good amount of money and give it away to causes we believe in. You want to give it a shot?”
I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing from Paul, a friend of mine. He was one of the first Asian American commodity traders at the Chicago Board of Trade, and now he was inviting me to start a futures trading company with him and a couple other novice investors.
“I’ll help you out and give you the capital you need to start investing,” Paul said. “What I have is yours. We’re brothers. You can trade my money.” Who says stuff like that to you? It seemed like little risk on my part. The upside was huge.
How could I refuse such an offer?
The next several years became a blur. I dove into the investing waters while remaining involved with the church. Paul and two other friends, Mike and Henry, would show up at the office around 5 a.m. to start our day, and we would end around 1:30 p.m., the time the markets closed, and I went to the church after this. We set up the offices in Newport Beach near the Pacific Ocean, at the famous Fashion Island Outdoor Mall. I learned to trade everything from corn, soybeans, wheat, and even pigs and our favorite cattle to silver, gold, and palladium.
Henry always made sure we got good food, like breakfast burritos, or if we felt like we had to be healthy, vegetable and fruit smoothies. Mike, Paul, and I would listen to the news happening around the world. A political coup or the taking down of a corrupt political leader could cause markets to shift. Paul would also call the weather services we paid for that gave us forecasts of daily, weekly, monthly, and potential drought conditions, storms, flooding. Then we rounded it out by calling the grain farmers and, of course, our favorite guys—the cattle farmers.
I never gambled, but that was what this felt like to me. The difference between gambling and trading, Paul assured us, was we were making decisions based upon data and taking educated, calculated risks. The highs were incredible and the lows were like someone “kicking you in the balls,” as Paul would say. If you’ve ever been in a losing trade, where you’re hemmorhaging massive amounts of money, you know what this pain feels like.
We were a few months into our learning curve of trading when we began to believe that cattle prices were headed lower. So we did what we called a short trade. We kept adding to the position that said the cattle markets were going to weaken. However, the market thought otherwise. We got to the point, after building a rather large position, that we had margin calls. This meant that the brokerage house was saying that we were over-leveraged and now owed them money if we wanted to keep our positions.
Paul looked at me with his serious and sad eyes and said, “Sorry, Davey, we’re going to have to roll out of our position and take the loss.” For some reason, we added “ie” or “y” to each other’s names at random times. It was evidence of our affection for each other.
“Paulie, I think one more day is important. Can we hold on to this position at least one more day?”
I didn’t want to tell him I had prayed about it and felt some confidence in our position, because if you’re a serious investor, you don’t want to blame God for the loss if you make a bad decision. Also, it looks unprofessional, like you’re not doing your homework and relying more upon chance. Does God really care about our profit and gains? Bottom line, Paul warned us that we could pray, but just don’t tell anybody.
“Okay, we can wait one more day,” Paul said. Later that day, we were together and saw a breaking news report on the television screens.
“Mad cow disease has been reported among cattle in the United States,” said a television reporter.
As soon as we heard that, our hearts sank.
Oh no—it’s going to affect our position. We’re going to get crushed!
In commodity trading, you have the potential to lose more than you invest. We looked to Paul, who was gravely concerned as well. He would typically invest multiple times what the rest of us would trade, but in this trade we were all heavily vested in our “short” position with cattle.
Paul had weathered many ups and downs as a trader. He calmed us down and said:
“Guys, let me make sure we’re in the wrong position. I’ll call the cattle rancher we talk to regularly.”
We all stood looking at Paul then one another, nervously awaiting the cattle rancher to answer Paul’s call.
It didn’t look good because, in our minds, if cattle were scarce, that would drive up the prices. As Paul made the call, we waited with bated breath. Paul asked the cattle rancher, “Well, are prices going down or up since there’s mad cow disease reported in America?” Then he smiled and said, “Guys, the markets are going down! We’re on the right side of this trade.” We started celebrating.
We’d made a historic trade that was noted by global financial news. We were called the “Asian cowboys.”
Making that windfall early on made us feel invincible, which was not good.
At this same time, the church kept growing despite my reservations about my role at Newsong and whether I should even be a pastor. I was confident that God wanted me to be free from the church. Our success at trading seemed like an indication of God’s affirmation of us.
However, God had something else in mind. We rode the success of that trade for a while. With our next big trade, I told God that if we failed, it would be a sign that I was not supposed to be in this type of business as a trader. The work itself and being with the boys every morning, launching and making fun of each other, was a dream but exhausting. As with the mad cow trade, we were on margin call for a soybean trade. Like before, I asked Paul to wait one more day because I was convinced we had the right trade position. He did, but the market kept going against us. With sadness, Paul looked at me and said, “Sorry, Davey, we have to get out of our position and take the loss.”
As soon as I called the trading house and rolled out of my position, the markets immediately went in the direction of our original position.
The fellas in the office started laughing. They had known I was all in on this trade.
It was clear I had to move on.
Feeling like a failure and with no extra capital that could lead me into my next career, I resigned myself to seeking out God’s plan for my life. I was in disbelief it wasn’t commodity trading. Why would God take me out of something that was so fun and lucrative? We were giving so much money away.
That’s when Paul pulled me aside and said something I’ll never forget:
“Dave, we can find other great traders to invest. But there aren’t too many people that can lead others spiritually like you can.”
I didn’t want to hear that. But I knew I needed to step away from trading. To reboot. I needed to reexamine my life. I told the leadership at Newsong I needed a sabbatical. My family and I decided to go to Thailand for a year. My hope was that I would gain clarity about what was next for me and my family. My guess was that church wasn’t a part of the answer, and I needed some space to think of other directions. Why Thailand? When I visited the work that our church supported there, I felt a connection to the Thai people. It felt like home, and it felt like the Narnia of my childhood. The spiritual energy of Thailand was off the charts.
