URBANDALE, Iowa — If you’re a business owner besieged by fund-raisers, Terry Stark has a memo for you:

He doesn’t want your cow – that’s your livelihood. And he won’t dip into the cash flow of fresh cow milk. But if you’re crying about the stray pail that spilled, he’ll gladly help you recover the loss – with the bonus of making an eternal impact on the Christian mission field.

One man’s waste really is another man’s treasure, be it locomotive engines or bubble bath soap. Pool tables or 10,000-gallon paint tanks. No matter the size, this businessman-turned-missionary is finding creatively unconventional ways to help fund the global church-planting enterprises of Avant Ministries, an inter-denominational mission based in Kansas City, Mo.

Many companies don’t realize how much their industrial waste burdens the bottom line, from excess and damaged inventory to outdated equipment. And often they’re unaware that a profit-draining problem might become an opportunity for another business, a Third World country or a charitable tax deduction.  

Enter Stark, who is equal parts matchmaker and politician. His stumping for a new alternative fund-raising program has earned Avant the 2005 Murray J. Fox Recycling Innovation Award, presented recently by the Iowa Recycling Association at its annual conference in Des Moines.

“I introduce Harry to Sally. I find the guy who has a problem and match him with the guy who has a need,” Stark says. “Avant becomes the connection, the way for a company to turn a problem into an asset.”

Water into wine

Turning industrial waste flow into revenue streams is nothing new. In a consumer-driven Western world, entire recycling industries have been generated from the production glut of plastics, paper and aluminum.

 But companies have bigger headaches than empty Pepsi cans. Maybe it’s a semi-sized truckload of $10 brooms with a misspelled brand name that’s clogging valuable warehouse space. Or a $10,000 drill press that’s no longer keeping pace with competitors and new technology. Traditional solutions – salvage yards, landfills, equipment brokers and recyclers – recapture mere pennies on the dollar. And these taxable pennies are often lost to Uncle Sam, along with storage, disposal, hauling and dumping costs.

“My question to companies is this: Instead of just writing me a check for a donation to Avant, how can I help you solve a problem that you already have?” Stark says. For example:

• A struggling locomotive repair business shuts down and is stuck with three partially-restored locomotives sitting on a train track in Iowa. Stark locates a buyer, facilitates the appraisal and helps negotiate a “where is, as is” deal that benefits both sides, and Avant nets a matchmaking fee.
• A manufacturer has 33 warehouse work benches left over from a marketing idea that fizzled. The benches are donated to Avant for a charitable in-kind gift receipt, and then Stark rustles up a couple of buyers.
• An Iowa real estate company purchases a building with 13 massive paint tanks inside. Aided by a professional broker, Stark finds a Kansas farm co-op that wants the tanks to store agricultural chemicals. The company frees up leasing space by unloading the unwanted tanks, the co-op pays to extract and transport them, and Avant gets a finder’s fee.

Avant’s industrial waste exchange program is only a year old, but “this is a prime example of how it works,” said Jared Johnson of Signature Real Estate Services in Des Moines. “It benefited us, it benefited the missionary, and it benefited the guy getting the tanks.”

Signature bought the warehouse 12 months ago with plans to lease it, but the giant tanks had been in the way. The building had been constructed around the tanks, so it was difficult to find a buyer willing to remove a wall and use cranes to tip the tanks and lift them onto semi-trucks.

“I’m busy, I’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Johnson said. “But I knew Terry could get the job done. I’ve known him for years.”

Simply put: A company’s perceived loss doesn’t have to stay a loss, Stark says. It could become a non-cash contribution that Avant converts into cash for its ministries.

Backyard mission field

Stark says he’s on a Lewis-and-Clark expedition, charting new territory not only for industrial waste disposal, but also for missions fund raising. Who would figure that this literal wasteland holds new frontiers for Christendom?

“We’re exploring the Wild West, where nobody has been before,” Stark says. “Everyone is fishing in over-fished evangelical ponds. You have 1,000 guys chasing the same rich guy. There’s not enough fish to feed everybody. It’s like, stand in line and take a number.”

So Stark is avoiding the well-traveled roads of most Christian fund-raisers, as well as the well-worn doorbells of donors and foundations. Which isn’t easy. There’s not exactly a Yellow Pages for waste-laden companies and clients, or entrepreneurial middlemen like Stark. So he’s using his assets: a proven track record from a successful business career, a healthy rolodex of corporate connections, and a heart for missions. “My biggest edge is God’s leading me to the right people,” he says.

Now 58, Stark spent 35 years as a general contractor and developer in Des Moines, where he owned and operated Pace Company Inc., a hotel, apartments, warehouses and retail centers. But he also spent 20 years smuggling Bibles into China and venturing overseas on short-term mission trips. When his multi-million dollar business at home suddenly unraveled, Stark saw it as God’s open door to a bigger Kingdom enterprise. The radical truth of God’s economy intersected both his personal life and newfound career: There is no waste with God; He can redeem anything for good.  

“I wanted to make the rest of my life the best of my life,” he says. “Most of the business owners I meet with are not Christians. This is my mission field.”

For Stark, ministering God’s peace to executives struggling with alcohol, business and marital problems is as vital as spreading the gospel of Avant’s new waste-exchange strategy.

Stark spent 18 months as an Avant board member before accepting a staff position in October 2004. He now works as a special assistant to President Paul Nyquist, who pastored the First Federated Church in Des Moines where Stark still serves on the elder board.

Avant runs a financially lean mission organization, grounded in a legacy of long-running partnerships with faithful churches and individual donors. But Avant is also counting on Stark to blaze a fresh fund-raising trail for expanding its church-planting work around the world. Stark’s corporate networking will reduce the fund-raising burden on missionaries and bolster Avant’s International Service Center in Kansas City, which provides field training, support and ministry projects.

“In the future, mission organizations will have to think innovatively about financing,” Nyquist says. “Old reservoirs are slowly drying up. Terry Stark gives us the ability to explore new possibilities and develop their potential. I am confident God will continue to supply sufficient resources to take the gospel around the world. We just have to be willing to tap new markets.”

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