YOUR STORY MATTERS HERE: Ben Murray

By Tim Wesley

The intersection of faith and work can be difficult to navigate and generally lies on a road less traveled. But in his position as a financial advisor, Ben Murray views that road as a daily commute.

Tasked with helping his customers travel the twists and turns of life, death and many major decisions in between, Ben strives to use the principles of his faith as a roadmap that connects Wall Street with Main Street.

“I think a lot about the intersection of faith and work,” he says. “We can be short-sighted in our faith, or we can live with eternity in mind. The stock market is a microcosm of that. If you look at the market over the long term, you’ve always won. But we get lost in the weeds of the day-to-day fluctuations and lose sight of the long-term view.

“As with our faith, if we keep centered on the long-term benefits and keep focused on why we’re doing what we’re doing, it all makes sense. Just trust the process and know that at the end of the day, everything will be ok.”

Along the way, he says, maintain integrity in your faith and in your work.

“My parents pounded me over the head with good morals. They taught me to do the right thing, how to treat people right. And I’m part of a good church, surrounded by family and friends who keep me grounded. My dad always said trust takes a while to build and a moment to break. If you don’t have trust, especially in my profession, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. There’s nothing more important in my professional life than always acting with integrity.”

Ben’s journey to that perspective included stops in Iowa City and Chicago, before the family – parents John and Ann; and sister Laura, now 28 – moved to Cranberry Township in 2004 and started to attend Dutilh. Now 29, he was 11 and joined Dutilh’s confirmation class and youth group. At Seneca Valley High School, he played on the baseball team, which won the WPIAL title and made it to the state semifinals his senior year.

His next stop, at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, solidified his faith.

While majoring in political science and minoring in religious studies, Ben played on the school’s baseball team and discovered the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), an international sports ministry. FCA, in turn, led him to Allegheny Christian Outreach, a local student organization, and he eventually became a leader of the group.

“Allegheny is an important place to me,” Ben says. “It’s where I came to know Jesus the best, so it’s a big part of my story. I had always gone to church but everyone has to have the experience where you make your faith your own. Mine started because somebody asked to borrow my Bible for an FCA meeting. They had meetings every Thursday night, so I had the option of studying or going to FCA. I chose the latter and never stopped going. We had ministry and worship, and heard a lot of different speakers. I met some great mentors and friends.”

During his last semester at Allegheny, Ben took a trip to the Florida Everglades with the group; the theme was finding your purpose and your vocation.

“We learned that the work you do is a form of worship to God,” he says. “We’re all endowed with skills and abilities unique to you, and those are not by accident. You have them from God and can humbly use them for service to others.”

As he contemplated his vocation after graduating from Allegheny in 2015, Ben decided to attend law school at Liberty University, but stayed only two years.

“It was a good experience,” he says. “I learned a lot, refined some skills and gained some critical thinking abilities, but it wasn’t my passion.”

Instead, he found a passion for the investment business, after interning at Federated Investors. When a friend suggested he check out Edward Jones, a leading financial services firm, Ben applied and was hired in 2017.

“I like people, and I like helping people,” he says. “In this career, I have the opportunity to intersect with people in all different walks of life. I’m not just working behind a desk. I’m a relationship person. I know a lot when it comes to investing, but my job is not math. At the end of the day, my passion for trying to help people is the most important quality.”

That passion can be tested, such as when his clients have to weather the fluctuations of the stock market. After a decade-long bull market, the benchmark S&P 500 Index was down almost 20 percent last year, its worst performance since 2008. In difficult financial times, he always advises clients to remain focused on their long-term goals.

“You can sometimes bear the brunt of their frustrations,” he says. “But I feel like I can make a difference by what I’m doing for people. In the long run, I help them to have confidence, with a plan and a foundation to build on to help them achieve their goals. When I see people able to retire as planned or send a kid to college – things they worked hard for – there’s a sense of accomplishment in helping them to do that.”

For Ben, the toughest times are when he has to shepherd a family through the financial aspects of losing a loved one.

“That has nothing to do with investing and everything to do with being a caring person,” he says. “Just in the past few months two of my clients passed. I’m at their house, sitting with the family, crying and mourning with them. It’s pretty humbling and challenging, but in there is an opportunity to comfort people as best you can, just being able to love on people as they go through the hardest couple days of their life.

“It’s simple: people don’t care about how much you know until they know about how much you care about them. The fact I care makes it harder. I lose sleep over this stuff, but it makes me better, and I just try to keep my faith in front of what I’m thinking. I can’t always be outward with my faith, but I say quick prayers to God to help me to help people.”

And he always remembers that it comes back to integrity and trust.

“Integrity and trust are more important than any stock, bond or fund that I’ll ever recommend to somebody,” he says. “My ‘brand’ isn’t as a financial advisor, it’s as a trusted partner. There are a lot of selfish people in every walk of life. Greed is a terrible sin and when you make decisions contrary to what you say you stand for, sin will always find you and always catch up to you. Always care more about the people across from you, than you care about yourself.”

While focusing on his career, Ben’s also growing in his faith. At Dutilh, he just started a three-year term on the Leadership Board. He participates in the men’s group and Sunday morning classes, and he manages the softball team, which he says is always looking for more players.

“We’re all just doing life together, like doing a Bible study and hanging out,” he says. “There’s no secret sauce; you just need to show up. The friendships I’ve developed at Dutilh – with guys such as Tim Holt, Pete Ekstam, Ramesh Subramaniam, Tom Drennan and Garrick Barnett – have accelerated my getting involved in the church.

“Dutilh has meant a lot to me and my family, as we go through life’s ups and downs. It helps you get centered on what’s important. I’ve had examples of what it looks like to be a Christian man from lots of different people. Those guys are some of my best friends; we have real, authentic relationships. You don’t just go to ‘play’ church, you go to live the best life you can.  We all fall short, but it’s a place you can learn and grow.”

Ben took another big step in his personal growth last July when he married Kayla Klaus of State College. She’s a physician’s assistant in a family medical practice and they live in Zelienople. They met in 2018, just before he started six months of training at Edward Jones in Arizona.

“It was a cool experience to be able to live in a new place,” he says. “But everything I have is here, my family, Kayla. All of the building blocks were here and I couldn’t imagine moving 2,000 miles away.”

For Ben Murray, that’s a road less traveled for some very good reasons.

-Published February 8, 2023

If you or someone you know in the Dutilh family has an interesting story, send us your ideas! We would love to help tell your story. Email: communications@dutilhumc.org.