Todd Peterson NFL Kicker Football Chairman Seed Company Bible Translation Generosity Giving Finish Line Podcast
Finish Line Podcast Episode 46

Todd Peterson, Former NFL Kicker, on Honing Your Focus in Generosity

As your income and influence grow, you may find generosity becoming less about whether to give and more about how to steward what God has placed in your hands.

How do you move from scattered giving toward a focused approach that brings your money, time, relationships, and abilities around the Kingdom priorities God has put on your heart?


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Meet your guide

Todd Peterson, a former NFL kicker who played thirteen seasons professionally, shares how his career became a training ground for stewardship, generosity, and dependence on God. Alongside his wife, Susan, Todd learned early that increased income did not have to produce an equally expanding lifestyle. Experiences with being cut, injured, and eventually retiring pushed them to think beyond giving from current income and begin viewing savings, investments, relationships, and influence as resources entrusted to them.

Over time, their giving also became more focused. Rather than supporting dozens of disconnected causes, Todd and Susan concentrated deeply on a smaller number of ministries where they could contribute money, leadership, relationships, travel, and board service. Bible translation became one of their central passions, leading Todd into collaboration with organizations working to make Scripture available in every language.

By the end, you may see generosity less as distributing extra money and more as discerning where God has uniquely equipped you to invest your whole life.

What you’ll gain

  • Why giving first can protect you from lifestyle expansion
  • How to move from scattered giving toward focused generosity
  • Why stewardship includes savings, influence, skills, and relationships
  • How personal involvement can deepen your connection to ministries
  • Why collaboration is accelerating global Bible translation
  • How to keep taking new steps toward greater generosity

Inspired? Take your next step

Try the Game of Life Simulator

Step into a four-minute interactive experience and see what unfolds as you decide how to manage your resources.

Start the Game
Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot
Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot

Inspired? Learn how to partner with ministries well.

A compelling ministry story can inspire you to respond. But wise partnership often begins with better questions.

Applied Generosity Intervention Partnership Focus

What is the ministry really seeking to restore?

Learn to look beyond visible needs toward people, context, relationships, and flourishing.

Applied Generosity Intervention Partnership Fruitfulness

How do you recognize meaningful impact?

Consider how ministries learn, evaluate their work, and pursue lasting change.

Applied Generosity Intervention Partnership Faithfulness

What does genuine ministry partnership look like?

Explore how to foster trust, alignment, and shared mission in your giving.

In our Intervention Series on the Applied Generosity Podcast, we’ll help you become a more thoughtful, discerning, and faithful partner.

Start the Series

Quotes to Remember

  • “We very early on saw the NFL as a mission field and we were very highly compensated missionaries in a sense.”
  • “You can’t really be a man of humility until you’ve been humiliated.”
  • “I’m never going to make another penny before we give to God first.”
  • When the income really started to come, we were better prepared for it because we had made a decision that we were going to give first.”
  • “As our income increases, our lifestyle doesn’t have to grow with it.”
  • “My NFL career, all 13 years, felt like God had a plan for my life.”
  • “At the end of the day, what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives is giving them away.”
  • “We want to life full and abundant life and experience all God has for us. And the best way we knew how to do that was to hold things loosely.”
  • “Football was one thing that God gave me a talent for, but it wasn’t the only thing he created me to do.” 
  • “We are people who really want to be invested in every sense of the word. We don’t want to simply write a check to an organization.”
  • “All ministry hinges on the power of the gospel in the language of a person.”
  • “Could there be a greater injustice than not having access to the Gospel in your language?”
  • “By 2033, we can eradicate bible poverty, meaning every language on Earth has access to at least some portion of the scripture translated.”
  • “We believe in the bible translation world that the last bible translator is alive now.”

Links from the Show

Bible References from the Show

Matt. 16:25 | Whoever Seeks to Save His Life

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Isaiah 55:8 | My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

Ephesians 2:10 | We Are God’s Workmanship

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Revelation 7:9 | Every Tribe, Nation, and Tongue

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,

Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.

Enter your information below and we’ll send you our free PDF guide to explore the specific adventure you were called into.

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Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.
Generosity Profile Image
Enter your information below and we’ll send you our free PDF guide to explore the specific adventure you were called into.
Generosity Profile Image

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