One of the big things we’re passionate about at Faith Driven Investor is going back to “The Book”. We believe that God speaks to us through His Word and that all of Scripture is useful for instruction on how to formulate and execute an investment strategy. This includes our motive for investing well, the importance of saving, and how we might invest (Gleaning, Parable of the Talents, Investments for Eternal Consequence). Scripture, when taken in aggregate, provides us with a great handbook on every question about investing—why, how, where, what, and when. We also believe that God speaks to His people with shared, yet unique, callings. As such, we don’t think that there is one specific formula for Faith Driven Investing, even while there are many unifying principles.

To kick off the New Year, we’ve launched three new reading plans for Faith Driven Investors. Check them out here on the FDI site and in the Bible app from YouVersion.

If you have ideas on additional reading plans or might be interested in guest contributing a plan for the Faith Driven Investor Channel, send us a note!

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Today, we have not one special guest but two for you to hear from. We are talking with Will Thomas and Dean Macfarlan down in the heart of Texas. They’re both accomplished investors on their own, but what makes the story even more compelling is that they’re a part of a new movement of City Networks where like-minded Faith Driven Investors are uniting to do more together than they might be able to do apart.

Ambassadors Impact Network is a group of over 30 different members that are coming together to collectively invest in and encourage Faith Driven Entrepreneurs. Hear how they’re connecting faith-driven entrepreneurs with like-minded investors and how you can replicate their success in your own city.

This is a movement we’re hoping to see take off across the country, and we’re excited for you to hear Dean and Will share what they’ve learned in their experience. As always, thanks for listening.

Useful Links:

Ambassadors Impact Network

Angel capital association

Creating Your Own Angel Investing Group

This article was originally published here.

Check out Eventide Investments for other quality content!

by Finny Kuruvilla

The original meaning of ‘priority’ was singular — the very first thing. At Eventide, our investing priority is to own businesses that advance the global common good.

One of our favorite books that we read in the last year was Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Essentialism is defined as “the relentless pursuit of less, but better.” How many of our individual and corporate lives are overloaded? The book wryly describes staff meetings that have ten “top priorities” without any sense of irony. Even the English language has been evolving:

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things.

(McKeown, p. 16)

This reminder should challenge all of us in nearly all domains of life. In investing, in particular, one cannot have multiple priorities. This, of course, does not mean that only one thing will happen — it means that we can only truly follow one ‘lighthouse.’ We have made the case that the lighthouse should not be financial returns but promotion of the global common good. While this can seem counterintuitive at first, we believe the best way to generate attractive, long-term, risk-adjusted returns for our investors is to seek to invest in companies that best serve the needs of others. In pursuing that one goal, we believe financial returns generally follow as a happy byproduct.

One of the other thoughts that McKeown offers is the idea that we’re not living merely in information overload but in opinion overload. (Think of how many, often contradictory, opinions there are about dieting strategies.) It’s easy to sympathize with the average investor who is bombarded with investing advice that makes the enterprise utterly confusing.

Our investment advice is not first and foremost about financial ratios and prognostications, but an appeal to the purpose of investing, and even of business itself. Our hope is that the “why” of investing will illuminate the “how” and the “what.”

This article expresses the views of Eventide Asset Management, LLC (“Eventide”), an investment adviser, and there is no guarantee that any investment strategy will achieve its objectives, generate profits, or avoid losses. Readers should be aware that Eventide’s approach may not produce the desired results, and Eventide’s ethical values screening criteria could cause it to underperform other firms that do not have such screening criteria. The term “smart” is used for informational purposes only, and does not imply a certain level of skill or training by the Adviser. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal.

Eventide is providing this information for informational purposes only. Eventide serves as investment adviser to mutual funds distributed through Northern Lights Distributors, LLC (“NLD”), member FINRA/SIPC. NLD and Eventide are not affiliated entities.

(8524-NLD-12/5/2018)

This video was originally published here.

Check out Faith & Co. for other quality content!

by Faith & Co.

Bruce Baker, associate professor of business ethics at Seattle Pacific University, discusses the relevance of the Bible’s teachings in the modern business world.

“Every business has a field, every business has a harvest, every business has some form of work. Every business exists in a greater society. Every greater society on the face of the earth has people on the margins. Gleaning… is part of the natural operation of the business. It’s not just handing money out, it’s not just making a charitable donation. No, it’s using the engines of the business, the business model, in a way that involves people on the margins.”

– Bruce Baker

Watch the full video below!