My Story

Business Biography
Rick Fox has spent more than five decades helping entrepreneurs, investors, lenders, attorneys, and business owners start, finance, grow, restructure, and transition businesses.

His career began in the financial services industry during a period when comprehensive financial planning was still emerging as a recognized discipline. As a Certified Financial Planner, Senior Vice President, and Director of Financial Services for Stifel Nicolaus, one of America's leading investment banking and brokerage firms, Rick helped develop and present, as part of a large team, financial planning seminar programs that contributed to the establishment of one of the nation's early comprehensive financial planning departments. During this period, he also served as an advisor, contributor, and ghostwriter for several nationally recognized investment and hard-money newsletters.

As an investment banker and Registered Principal with the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), Rick gained extensive experience in securities, capital formation, corporate finance, investment analysis, and business development. This foundation provided a unique perspective that would later shape his consulting and advisory work.

In 1977, Rick was asked by Derek Prince to evaluate whether a struggling ten-unit restaurant chain owned by a Christian businessman could be saved. The owner, a former ten-store McDonald's franchisee, was facing significant operational and financial challenges. What began as a single assignment became Rick's first major business workout and introduced him to a field that would occupy much of his professional career.

That engagement launched more than five decades of assisting businesses facing both opportunities and challenges. Since then, Rick has worked with companies across numerous industries, helping owners evaluate opportunities, solve operational and financial problems, raise capital, restructure troubled situations, navigate transitions, and identify practical paths forward.

Over the years, he has advised clients in matters ranging from startup development and growth strategies to corporate restructurings, business workouts, acquisitions, succession planning, and special situations requiring experienced strategic oversight. His experience includes working alongside bankruptcy attorneys, securities attorneys, lenders, investors, and federal prosecutors in matters involving business disputes, securities fraud investigations, financial irregularities, corporate restructuring, and complex business transactions.

Over the course of his career, Rick has helped launch, finance, evaluate, advise, acquire, restructure, or transition dozens of businesses. He is known for his ability to quickly identify underlying issues, assess alternatives, simplify complex situations, and develop practical solutions tailored to the needs of each client.

In 1994, Rick founded Christian Business Solutions to assist Christian entrepreneurs and business owners in applying sound business principles and biblical wisdom to the challenges of leadership, growth, stewardship, and succession. Through seminars, workshops, radio programs, consulting engagements, and long-term advisory relationships, he has helped business owners address issues ranging from strategic planning and capital formation to management, growth, succession planning, and business transitions.

Rick believes successful organizations are built on more than products, services, and profits. They are built on vision, stewardship, integrity, sound leadership, and a commitment to serving others. His approach combines decades of experience in investment banking, financial planning, business development, corporate restructuring, and entrepreneurship with timeless biblical principles.

Today, Rick continues to serve entrepreneurs, business owners, investors, and ministry leaders seeking practical solutions, wise counsel, and a clear path forward. His passion remains helping visionary leaders transform ideas into reality, overcome obstacles, build stronger organizations, and leave a lasting legacy for future generations.

Ministry Bio
Rick Fox has been actively involved in ministry leadership for more than five decades.

His spiritual journey within the Charismatic Movement began in 1962 while attending an Episcopal church. During the 1970s, he served as a teaching elder and became involved with numerous ministry teams ministering throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel, including teams led by internationally respected Bible teacher Derek Prince. Those formative years established a lifelong commitment to sound biblical teaching, discipleship, leadership development, and meaningful relationships across denominational and cultural boundaries.

Rick also served on leadership teams that helped organize two significant gatherings of the era: the 1975 Shepherds' Conference in Kansas City, which brought together nearly 5,000 men from around the world, and the 1977 Kansas City Charismatic Renewal Conference, which hosted approximately 50,000 believers over five days.

In September 1978, Rick quietly withdrew from active participation in the Charismatic Movement due to growing concerns regarding leadership practices, accountability, and their long-term impact upon the Body of Christ. Those concerns would eventually shape much of his later teaching and writing.

For decades, Rick has focused on understanding how Yeshua (Jesus) is building His Church and how believers can more faithfully align themselves with the original apostolic foundations established in Scripture. His teaching emphasizes Divine Order, sound doctrine, biblical leadership, stewardship, accountability, and the restoration of healthy relationships within the Body of Christ.

Rick believes the Church is living in a significant transitional period as the times of the Gentiles draw toward their conclusion and God continues His work of reconciliation, bringing Jew and Gentile together as one new man in Messiah. This perspective has influenced much of his research, writing, and teaching concerning the future direction of the Church.

Today, Rick's ministry focuses on rebuilding healthy leadership cultures, restoring biblical patterns of collaboration and accountability, strengthening foundational teaching, and encouraging initiatives that bridge ministry and marketplace influence. Whether working with ministry leaders, entrepreneurs, or collaborative teams, his objective remains consistent: helping build people, organizations, and relationships capable of enduring beyond a single generation.

Rick's educational background is in economics and business. Between his undergraduate studies and graduate work at an Ivy League institution, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1968 and served in the Chaplain Corps. His unique combination of business experience, ministry leadership, and marketplace involvement has given him a distinctive perspective on leadership, stewardship, discipleship, and organizational development.

Marketplace Ministry
Faith Was Never Intended To Be Confined To Sunday
For many believers, ministry is associated primarily with churches, missions, conferences, and religious organizations.
Yet Scripture reveals a much broader picture.

From Genesis through Revelation, God consistently worked through individuals whose primary sphere of influence was not the synagogue, temple, or congregation, but the marketplace.

Abraham managed large enterprises and extensive resources.
Joseph governed the economic affairs of Egypt.
Daniel served in the highest levels of government.
Lydia operated a successful commercial enterprise.
The Apostle Paul supported much of his ministry through his trade as a tentmaker.

Throughout Scripture, business, government, agriculture, commerce, and stewardship are presented as legitimate arenas through which God's purposes can be advanced.

Marketplace ministry recognizes that business itself can become a vehicle for service, influence, stewardship, discipleship, and Kingdom impact.

A Lifetime In Two Worlds
For more than fifty years, Rick Fox has lived at the intersection of ministry and business.
While building a career in investment banking, financial services, business consulting, corporate restructuring, and entrepreneurship, he simultaneously served in ministry leadership, teaching, discipleship, leadership development, conferences, and international ministry teams.

Unlike many who have spent their lives exclusively in either ministry or business, Rick's experience has allowed him to observe both worlds from the inside.

He has worked with entrepreneurs seeking to build successful companies.
He has worked with ministry leaders seeking to build lasting spiritual communities.
He has also witnessed the strengths and weaknesses of both.

Business without biblical principles often loses its moral compass.
Ministry without sound stewardship often struggles to sustain its vision.
Marketplace ministry seeks to bring these two worlds together.

The Marketplace As A Mission Field
Many people view business primarily as a mechanism for generating income.
Marketplace ministry views business differently.

Business creates opportunities to:
* Demonstrate integrity.
* Practice stewardship.
* Develop leaders.
* Create employment.
* Solve problems.
* Serve customers.
* Build relationships.
* Influence culture.
* Support Kingdom initiatives.

Every business owner, manager, employee, investor, professional, and entrepreneur interacts daily with people who may never enter a church building.

For this reason, the marketplace remains one of the largest mission fields in the world.

* Entrepreneurship As Stewardship
* Entrepreneurs occupy a unique role within society.
* They identify opportunities.
* They create products and services.
* They organize resources.
* They assume risk.
* They create jobs.
* They solve problems.

Marketplace ministry recognizes entrepreneurship as more than economic activity.
It is also stewardship.

The entrepreneur is entrusted with vision, resources, people, and opportunities that affect the lives of others.
This stewardship carries both practical and spiritual responsibilities.

The Role Of The Marketplace Leader
Marketplace ministry is not about preaching sermons at work.
Nor is it about turning businesses into churches.
Rather, it is about bringing biblical values into every aspect of leadership and decision-making.

Marketplace leaders influence others through:
* Character.
* Integrity.
* Fair dealing.
* Accountability.
* Servant leadership.
* Wise stewardship.
* Long-term thinking.
* Responsible management.
Their influence is often demonstrated more through example than through words.

Building For Future Generations
One of Rick's recurring themes is legacy.
Whether working with businesses, ministries, investors, or leadership teams, the objective is not simply immediate success.

The objective is to build organizations, structures, and relationships capable of enduring beyond a single generation.
Healthy businesses create opportunities for families, employees, customers, and communities.

Healthy ministries create opportunities for discipleship, spiritual growth, and Kingdom advancement.
Marketplace ministry recognizes that both can serve God's purposes when built upon sound foundations.

The Integration Of Calling
For many believers, faith and work remain separate compartments.
Marketplace ministry seeks to eliminate that division.

God is not interested only in what happens on Sunday.
He is equally interested in what happens on Monday morning.

The boardroom.
The sales meeting.
The construction site.
The farm.
The manufacturing plant.
The investment office.
The startup company.
The family business.

Each becomes an opportunity to exercise stewardship, leadership, service, and influence under the Lordship of Messiah.

For Rick Fox, marketplace ministry has never been a program.
It has been a way of life.

A lifelong effort to bring biblical wisdom, practical experience, stewardship, leadership, and Kingdom purpose together in ways that strengthen both people and organizations.

Postscript: One Calling, Two Expressions
One of the most practical examples of marketplace ministry in my own life emerged following my departure from Agape Fellowship and the direction much of the Charismatic Movement had taken by the late 1970s.

A small group of us began what became Heartland Ministries, built upon many of the apostolic principles, leadership concepts, and biblical foundations I had learned through Derek Prince and the ministry teams with which I had served.

A few years later, after leaving Stifel, several of us founded Heartland Management Company, a Registered Investment Advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Through Heartland Management, we continued our work in asset management, business consulting, investment analysis, and corporate workouts.

What made this unusual was that I intentionally chose not to separate the two identities.

Our business cards simply read:
Heartland

There was no "Ministries" designation.
There was no "Management Company" designation.
Just Heartland.

The card contained our names, address, and telephone number.

To some, this may have appeared insignificant. To us, it represented something much larger.
It reflected our conviction that God's purposes are not confined to church buildings, ministry organizations, or Sunday activities. 

The same principles of stewardship, leadership, wisdom, accountability, service, and faithfulness applied whether we were teaching Scripture, counseling leaders, managing investments, restructuring businesses, or helping entrepreneurs solve problems.

The same gifts worked in both environments.
The same callings operated in both environments.
The same people served in both environments.

We did not view ministry and business as competing worlds. We viewed them as different expressions of the same Kingdom responsibilities.

Even the design of our business card reflected that perspective. The name Heartland was embossed across a wheat-stock background, a quiet reminder that sowing, stewardship, cultivation, and harvest are principles that apply equally to spiritual life, business, leadership, and human relationships.

Looking back, I realize that Heartland may have been one of the earliest practical expressions of what many now call marketplace ministry.

At the time, we simply viewed it as living out our faith wherever God had placed us.