A Christ-Centered Mortgage Company (w/ Matt Clarke)

On this episode of the Christian Business Leader Podcast, we’re joined by Churchill Mortgage President/COO Matt Clarke.

Matt Clarke, President and COO of Churchill Mortgage, joins host Darren Shearer to explore how faith and business leadership intersect in practical and powerful ways. With over two decades of experience transforming Churchill into a nationally recognized, employee-owned lender, Matt shares how integrating biblical principles has shaped the company’s culture, strategy, and impact.

In this conversation, Matt opens up about his journey from self-focused executive to servant leader, influenced by mentors like Churchill founder Mike Hardwick and financial expert Dave Ramsey. He discusses how daily devotionals, marketplace discipleship, and Christ-centered leadership have created a thriving, mission-driven workplace. Together, they reflect on how Christian business leaders can cultivate clarity, steward influence, and lead with both courage and compassion.

Matt offers personal stories of transformation, navigating economic uncertainty, and seeing God’s hand in tough decisions. He challenges leaders to build businesses where faith isn’t sidelined but embraced as a framework for flourishing teams, loyal customers, and enduring legacies.

https://www.churchillmortgage.com

Key Takeaways

• Leadership Realignment Through Honest Feedback: A 360-degree review early in Matt Clarke’s career revealed that while he was effective, he was seen as self-focused and difficult to work with. That moment marked a turning point, prompting him to lead with more humility, empathy, and a desire to help others succeed.
• Bringing Faith Fully Into Business: At Churchill Mortgage, Matt discovered through founder Mike Hardwick that faith is not something to leave at the door. He learned to embrace a leadership style rooted in biblical values and saw firsthand how faith can shape culture, decisions, and team dynamics for the better.
• Truth Shared in Love Builds Stronger Teams: Matt believes clarity is a form of kindness. He encourages leaders to have courageous conversations, even when they are uncomfortable. Providing honest feedback helps people grow into better teammates, professionals, and individuals.
• Daily Devotionals Create Spiritual Rhythm: For over five years, Matt has sent daily devotionals to Churchill employees and thousands of outside readers. These messages combine life lessons, leadership insights, and Scripture, building a culture of encouragement and reflection across the company.
• Prayer as a Strategic Foundation: Before moving into their new headquarters, Churchill employees wrote Scripture on the walls and placed Bibles inside the structure. That space later became a place of prayer during the COVID crisis, where leaders consistently sought wisdom and courage for difficult decisions.
• Employee Ownership That Changes Lives: Churchill became fully employee-owned through an ESOP that began in 2013. One impactful story involved an employee whose ownership shares later funded her son’s college tuition. The decision to share ownership reflected a deeper commitment to love and legacy.
• Educating Homebuyers with a Teacher’s Heart: Churchill focuses on guiding clients to make wise, long-term financial decisions. Inspired by Dave Ramsey’s principles, the company helps families pursue financial peace through responsible mortgage planning and debt-free homeownership when possible.
• Faith-Led Culture with Open Doors: Churchill is unapologetically faith-based, but belief is not a requirement for employment. Matt is clear that team members of all backgrounds are welcome, as long as they align with the company’s values and respect its mission. The environment promotes love, integrity, and mutual respect.

Christian Business Leader is the show for marketplace Christians seeking to explore and apply God’s will for business. If you want to learn more about how to do business for the glory of God and shape culture through discipling the business world, this show is for you.

Full Episode Transcript

Heads up: This transcript was created with AI, so you might notice a few typos or small mistakes. We recommend listening to the episode for the best experience!  

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Access more. Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ-following business leaders explore God’s will and ways for business. This show is a ministry of the Center for Christianity and Business at Houston Christian University and features conversations with today’s Christ-centered business leaders who are representing Christ faithfully in the business world. I’m your host, Darren Scheer, and if you want to make your work, leadership, and company’s culture more Christ-centered, you’ve come to the right place. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Christian Business Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Darren Schear, and on this episode, we’re joined by Matt Clark. Matt is president and chief operations officer at Churchill Mortgage Corporation. Since joining Churchill in 2003, Matt has led its transformation from broker to banker while overseeing operations and strategic growth. And Matt writes daily devotionals to the Churchill Mortgage team each morning to share thoughts, applications, and biblical principles. He’s a former CFO and Nashville Business Journal CFO Awards finalist, holds a BA in finance from Stonehill College, and serves on numerous industry and nonprofit boards, leads humanitarian missions worldwide, and is a dedicated husband and father of four. Matt, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.SPEAKER_02 1:30

Darren, thank you. What an introduction.SPEAKER_00 1:33

Matt, when did you first realize God wants to be involved in your work and business?SPEAKER_02 1:39

You know, that’s a really good question. I spent a lot of time early in my career and early in my adult life doing what I would call living incongruently, right? I was trying to climb the corporate ladder in my early career and just kind of really succeed in that regard. I was trying to be a great husband. I was trying to be a great coach and run in sports leagues. I was trying to teach at church, even though I didn’t really know much about what I was teaching. I was trying to do all these things. I was a kind of a different person in each and every one of them. And then I came to work at Churchill. And when I came to work at Churchill, one of the great mentors of my life, uh, Mike Hardwick, Churchill’s founder, he taught me a whole different way of doing business. He taught me a whole different way of living my life. He taught me that not only is it okay to bring life into work, but expect it that we’re all people and that we’re all humans. And he really showed me how powerful it is to understand your faith through the lens of everything you’re doing and just let that be the person you are. And so starting to work with Churchill and under Mike, which I’ve now done for 22 years, and I just started catching fire for living our business that way and understanding that God called us to be who we are and to run a great business, and we shouldn’t separate the two.SPEAKER_00 3:15

Yeah. So what would have been something specific, sort of like a before and after picture you could show us that this is kind of because you were a CFO before Churchill, right?SPEAKER_02 3:29

I’m a recovering CFO, right? So I was I was a corporate controller, and then I came to Churchill and was a CFO for a long time, and now I do what I’m doing now. I’ll tell you a story. Years ago, when I was in my early career, like I said, I I had some measure of success at a young age. And the the big dogs at the corporate office in Chicago sent teams to do 360 reviews for all of the executives, which I was a young executive at this organization. And I was excited about it because I couldn’t wait to hear all the great things people had to say about me. And so we went through the process and they interviewed my boss and senior leaders around me and people that worked for me. And I was sitting down getting ready to go into the kind of the reveal meeting where they talked about the results. And I’m feeling pretty good. My chest is puffed out, I’m pounding myself. I’m thinking I’m gonna walk in there, they’re gonna give me a trophy, maybe a cape, and you know, don me king because I was doing such a great job. And what I heard was a punch in the gut. What I heard was Matt’s really smart. He does he gets great results. But we don’t like working with him. He didn’t care about people. All he cares about is what he’s gonna get done, how much credit he can get. And he’s not a great team player. And man, that really stung. That stung a lot. And so I started to transform the way that I saw my teammates. I started to transform the way that I saw myself. I started to understand that part of success is not just your success, but how can you engineer success and joy and fruitful living in the others around you? How can you operate in such a way that cause people to want to be attracted to you and let that be a multiplier effect on what you’re capable of? And I started loving people the way that Jesus has called us to love people, yeah, and it changed everything about how I saw my responsibilities. My responsibilities are to help people live better lives. That’s what I’m responsible for. And I do that through the business world and through my responsibilities in the business.SPEAKER_00 6:04

Yeah, that’s a perfect example of marketplace discipleship in the marketplace, and you can’t get that kind of feedback in your in your church on Sunday morning because everybody is sitting in a row, and there’s not that kind of familiarity with the way people people’s actual walk, their actual way of life. And and so for a long time, you know, marketplace has been thought of as yeah, it’s it’s that too. You can also serve God in the marketplace. I mean, I’ve come to the point where I’ve realized that this is the place because this is where we have relationships with people. This is where people can see our life and they can give us the feedback that we need to help, especially if we’re if we’re believers, fellow believers, helping other fellow believers learn how to how to relate to one another in a way that is honoring to God.SPEAKER_02 7:08

Yeah, and and and being an example of it, you know, what one of the beliefs we have is that clarity is kind. Right. And it doesn’t mean that clarity isn’t also going to be offensive to some people and sometimes hurtful in a moment, but not damaging long term, but helpful long term. And so when somebody’s off willing to give you what I call the sober truth, which is that they love you enough to tell you that you’re being a jerk or you’re doing something wrong, and they’re you you need to check yourself in some areas, that’s really I think loving people well. That’s serving others, that’s serving people, and too often I think we’re afraid to do that. We’re afraid to say, Darren, I think you’re making a huge mistake here, or Darren, I think your attitude stinks. And we need to talk about that if you’re going to be a participant on this team. And so I think being a Christian leader, too often people think of that as sometimes soft and overly just forgiving, while forgiveness is also an important attribute. Clarity, I think, is an incredibly important component of being a Christian leader and that you love people enough to give them information that can help them develop into a better human, and a better professional, and a better parent, and a better, you know, fill in the blanks. And that’s kind of a job.SPEAKER_00 8:39

Well said. What’s the story of a time when you saw God’s hand at work there at Churchill Mortgage?SPEAKER_02 8:48

You know, one of the things we did before we moved into the building we’re in today. We moved into this building. We were at the same location for goodness, 26, 27 years. And then about five years ago, we moved into another building. And while we’re getting that building ready, we had all of the employees that are in Nashville, we have people nationwide. So all the folks that were here in Nashville go over to the building one day and write Bible verses on the walls before we put the final paint on, and we put some Bibles in the walls before they finished all of the drywall. And we just felt like we wanted to ordain that facility for good. And, you know, we did that, we moved in, and then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, we spent a lot of time gathering together, you know, trying to figure out what are we gonna do? How are we gonna manage this, right? Interest rates fell to the floor, volume picked up through the roof, people were working from home, people, you know, it was just a difficult season. And we spent a lot of time in that conference room in particular that we call the war room in prayer. And one of the consistent things we do is we ask the Lord for wisdom, and we ask the Lord for courage. The Bible says if you if you ask the Lord for wisdom, he’ll give it to you. But wisdom without action isn’t all that useful. And so we also pray for the Lord for courage to help us make great decisions, and consistently doing that helped reveal to us moves that we otherwise might not have made, and given ourselves the opportunity to slow down and seek wisdom before making decisions we’re going to regret is one practice that we’ve um we’ve uncovered. We’ve also had some situations where we had some very difficult personnel decisions to make. I can remember in particular lamenting over a group of people that I had to let go, some people that were with us a long time. And I can recall praying over that decision and hearing, I love those people too from God. Don’t worry. I got it. And one young man in particular, who is the son of another long-tenured employee, somebody we’ve known since he was a young child, we had to let go. And a week later, he got his dream job. And he he he had gone through boot camp, he was a veteran, and he left the army, came to work at Churchill, was working a job that I think was an easy one for him. And he would have stayed there forever had he not had the opportunity to go seek work as part of the National Guard. And this trigger event helped him get into a job which he has been looking for forever. And today he is thriving far beyond what he would have done at Churchill. And I think the Lord just has these plans for folks. If we just allow him to work, right? It’s amazing what happens.SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah. What’s another one of your favorite stories that illustrates the impact being made by Churchill Mortgage?SPEAKER_02 12:30

One of the things we did, gosh, back in 2013, we began to convert the ownership of the organization from a single founder into an employee-owned company. Today we’re a hundred percent employee-owned organization uh through an Aesop plan that we started to put in place back in 2013. Shortly after we put the plan in place in 2013, a year or so later, one of our dear employees she died. And she had a young son that was in high school. And a few years later, the shares, her ownership share, was able to be redeemed, and that redemption was enough to put her son through college. And those are just there’s just great stories around how when you deploy a heart forgiving to others, the amazing things that can happen with just those small steps of faith. We didn’t have to convert the ownership of the company to the employees, right? That wasn’t something that was required. There was a lot of financial reasons for doing it, but it was a step that said, We love you guys, you’ve helped us become a successful organization, and it’s time that you get the share in the benefit of that. And if we’d not done that, who knows where this young man would have found the money to go to college? And there’s story after story after story of those benefits.SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah. Yeah. And so your your team members, are they? I mean, I I guess that they’re fully on board with the Christ-centered culture of the of the company. And do you get much pushback? I mean, I don’t know. So yeah.SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah, you know, we we we don’t shy away from it. We are we are faith-based people. It doesn’t mean, and and we’re not gonna hide that fact. In fact, I’ve always taken the position that you you don’t have to believe what I believe. You’re you’re good. I love you anyway. Come here, do a great job. We don’t really concern ourselves with what your religion is. But if me sharing my faith offends you, that’s probably more of an issue with how strongly you are in your own faith than being offended by mine. And you’re gonna know up front, before you come on board, we talk about these things. We’re open about it. We talk about our core convictions that are are all biblically principled convictions that we’re gonna operate by. And those are good. They’re good for business, they’re good for people, and we’re gonna deploy them in a way that’s healthy and enriching for our teammates and our business. But it doesn’t mean you’re forced to believe the Bible the way I believe the Bible. We’re not gonna pound it upside your head. And if you want to tune out, you tune out. But as long as you operate in a way that’s consistent with our values, and like the golden rule, right? Treat people the way that you would want to be treated. As long as you’re operating in a way personally and professionally that’s consistent with our values, you can believe what you want. But don’t ask us to stop communicating around our belief systems.SPEAKER_00 15:58

Right. Because you’re putting out daily devotionals to the team every morning, right? Where I mean, a lot of them are, if not all of them, are very faith forward, right?SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah, they are. I mean, I I I decided about five plus years ago that we were growing to a point where I didn’t know everybody any longer. I couldn’t walk into a branch I in Portland, Oregon, and know everybody by name and their kids like I like we used to when we were smaller. And so I decided as we’re growing, if I can’t know everybody as intimately as I used to, I want people to know me. And so I started to share stories and share thoughts and started writing every day to the organization. And I’ve been doing that for about five years. And generally speaking, I look for something that I could share that’s happened in my life, a lesson that I’ve learned, something, uh a business principle, a life principle tied to a Bible verse. And so what I’m trying to do is not just spread beliefs and thinking and ways to do business, but encourage people and help people through situations and give them things to think about and tie it all back to God’s word because I believe that’s the best source of information as it relates to how to do business in life. And so we send that out every single day to our teammates and you know, 10 to 20,000 other people.SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yeah, yeah. I’m looking at one of them right now. Uh, don’t let your ears get bored. And one of your key verse here is Ecclesiastes 5, 1, as you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s great wisdom for the marketplace.SPEAKER_02 17:50

It is, you know, I don’t if I recall, if I recall that one, one of the thoughts I had was if you feel like you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room or you’re deceiving yourself. And so too often we find that we want to fill the the quiet with our own voice, kind of like Peter did over and over and over, right? He just couldn’t help but throw his voice into the silence and say something stupid. I do that all the time, and so I just feel like one of the things that we can do that helps us the most as we grow, both in relationships and in business and in our learning, is to be quiet and listen, especially when you get into a prayer life. How many times, Darren, do you find yourself talking to God but not listening for an answer? Yeah, all the time.SPEAKER_00 18:44

Sure. Absolutely. So, what kind of fruit has has resulted from these daily devotionals? Are you do you get much feedback from folks in the company?SPEAKER_02 18:57

I do. I do. I get folks uh feedback from folks in the company and people outside the the organization. When I go to conferences or meetings, a lot of people will say, Hey, thank you. Right? I don’t keep keep that up. A lot of people reply back and say, you know, I needed that today. And quite frankly, I need it. One of the things it helps me do is create a discipline for my mornings, in that I have to show up. And part of showing up is showing up prepared, and part of being prepared is having your brain and your mind and your heart ready to roll and be your best. And so part of forcing myself to get up and read and then write and learn, learn something from what I’m reading, put it into a useful format and write about it, that creates a discipline that actually makes me so much better than I otherwise would. And if I can share with others and share something that’s helpful to them, what a benefit that is. And I just feel like God called me into that being part of the platform he’s asked me to participate in.SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah. So what is standard in the mortgage industry? And then what is Churchill Mortgage doing differently uh to raise the standard to a more biblical standard? Like what would be an example or two of that? You I mean, you’ve already shared a lot.SPEAKER_02 20:21

Well, here’s the thing the standard in the industry from a biblical perspective is all over the board. It’s probably no different than any other, than any other industry. There are pockets of people that you’ll gravitate to that have shared beliefs, and there’s a whole world outside of that pocket that doesn’t believe that you should mix you know, separation of church and state, separation of God and business, right? There’s a lot of those people that feel that way, but uh we just we don’t believe that. And so I’m not necessarily capable of explaining to you what I think the industry standard would be. I think there’s a potpourri of pockets that have all different sorts of types of values and convictions and beliefs. What Churchill does to continue to reinforce how we see the world and how we see God as part of our business is we talk about it. We we promote it, we put it on social media, we put it out on in in emails, we speak at events and we discuss it, we do things like we’re doing today, Darren, and talking about what does it mean to be a Christian and a business leader at the same time. And so we just don’t shy away from it. The Bible says don’t be ashamed of the gospel, and we’re not. And so that and and we also try to operate our organization in a way that leaves people better for the encounter. Yeah, those people being both our teammates and the families that trust us with the financial of their home. And so when you come into the church organization, we make sure that we treat you in a way that you want to be treated and leave you in a way that’s better off for coming in. And that’s different than some organizations of any type of industry. We know that if we care enough about our people, and our people care enough about our customers, then the customers are going to take care of the company. And if we do that in a biblically centered way and hold ourselves accountable to that standard, sure, we don’t always hit the mark, but we know it when we don’t hit it. And we can make course corrections along the way.SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah.SPEAKER_02 22:28

When it comes to the proper financing of your home, the way that you structure that is really important, that it fits within your budget, it fits within your family’s goals, and that you’re setting yourself up to get that home paid off earlier than you otherwise would. We we call that the real American dream of debt-free home ownership. And when we can help people get there, it’s amazing what opens up in their life. Not even when they get there, when they believe they can get there and they have a belief about their financial, the financial truth of their life. It opens up a ton of hope for that family and opportunities and better living.SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah. Yes. And so you do you only do residential mortgages or do you do other types of lending for businesses as well?SPEAKER_02 23:21

We do some commercial lending. We do some lending for builders and whatnot. But the 99.9% of what we do is residential lending.SPEAKER_00 23:31

Sure. So I’m sure all of our listeners are or a lot of our listeners right now are wondering. Um, and and this is not necessarily a finance podcast, but when are those interest rates coming down?SPEAKER_02 23:45

Who knows? Right. Who knows? You know, several years ago we’re like, hey, they’re gonna come down in 2024. And 2024, hey, next year is gonna be the year where we’re at next year, and they’re still not coming down. Yeah, and there’s a lot of things that are going on that cause that uh continued um healthy inflation, jobs reports, what’s happening with Fanny and Freddie, consumer confidence, all of these things are factors into what happens with interest rates. And so I feel like we should stop waiting for interest rates, and we should begin to align our expectations with the truth of today. In other words, wisdom means understanding the truth and aligning your behaviors to it. And I think there’s wisdom right now if you’re looking to finance a home or purchase a home or move, build your budget around what today looks like and execute according to that. Standing on the sidelines and waiting for interest rates to drop, you might be on the sidelines a long time. And I have news for you home values haven’t gone down in a long time, they’re going up every year. And so you just have to balance what are you trying to accomplish? What type of home are you trying to purchase? What’s the affordability index for you and your family today as it relates to that value of the home in terms of the interest rates? And just make the best decision and make an informed decision about that. But when interest rates are coming down, Darren, I don’t know. I really don’t. I could I could throw an opinion. Obviously, I have several of those, but it wouldn’t be a helpful opinion to anybody listening.SPEAKER_00 25:28

Well, discern the times and uh adapt, adapt to it. I mean, if you need a house right now, you need a house. So churchhillmortgage.com is the website and Matt C. Clark with an E on the end. Matt C Clark.com is Matt’s website where you can read. I mean, these are the devotionals that you’re actually sending out to your team members there at Matt’s morning message, right?SPEAKER_02 25:54

Yeah, those are the I I send them out and they get probably cleaned up with a little spell check done because I’m writing them early in the morning and then they get posted.SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, love what you’re doing, Matt. Thank you for the example that you set for those of us who are looking to step up our game and the way that we serve the Lord and partner with him in the marketplace. Um, it’s great work you’re doing.SPEAKER_02 26:21

Well, thank you, Darren. I appreciate what you’re doing as well as creating a platform for us to talk about the right way to do business. And the fact that following God, loving people, and being a great business person don’t have to be separate. In fact, they enhance one another if you do it right.SPEAKER_00 26:42

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