There is nothing like the power of getting together. There’s something catalytic about spending time praying for what God might do in this space. What started off as a small gathering of 30 friends we had to cap out at 175 leaders of the Faith Driven Investor gathering in Deer Valley, Utah for a day of prayer and shaping the conversation.

So many ideas that came from last week … It was so encouraging to hear ideas about things happening in real estate, private equity, employee resource groups and so much more. In the surveys we’ve already heard a desire for future events, content ideas, and possibly the idea of working groups to evaluate deals together … And thats just a few of them! There’s no way we can summarize them in one email, which is why we wanted to create this website for those conversations to continue.

This is very much in its beta form, but we hope that its something that you’ll be proud of and want to share with friends. In the coming weeks we’ll be adding blog posts with slides and notes from many of the speakers. We’ll also continue to update the Asset Map that captures who is serving in this movement and we’re planning to process the input on the Unifying Principles and have an updated version up by the end of August. We’re grateful for pastoral friends like Chip Ingram, Tom Nelson, Toby Kurth who have offered to provide theological leading to many of the things we discussed as the conversation continues. We also know that many smaller working groups might spring out of this for different spaces or to tackle some of the Areas Where Action is Required.

While things are fresh we wanted to highlight a few tangible ways we’d invite you continue to shape the conversation and lead out as a voice in the movement.

Encourage Others to Join the Conversation – If you know friends who want to join the conversation but couldn’t attend the event we encourage them to sign up for a monthly newsletter where we’re going to bring the best podcasts, articles, videos into one place.

Listen to the First Episodes of the Podcast – We’ve got four beta episodes we’ll be releasing over the next two months. You can start by listening to Henry Kaestner and Aimee Minnich on the introductory episode. And please be sure to send us your thoughts on format, topics and guests we should be consider. Then, stay tuned for these upcoming shows…

• Pete Kelly unpacks how Apartment Life is making both a Spiritual Impact and delivering a greater Financial Return.

• Trae Stephens talks about this idea of Abundance vs. Scarcity and Competition vs. Creation through the lens of Scripture.

• Christeen Rico talks about how Faith Communities are Strengthening Culture and Companies at Apple, Dropbox, Google.

• Frank Chen talks about being a Servant Leader to the Entrepreneurs they work with at Andreesen Horowitz.

Share Your Thoughts and Thoughts Shaping You – Yesterday on the blog we shared the prayer that Mats Tunehag shared with us last week at the event. We’d encourage you to check that out and let it recalibrate your heart as you start your week. Please send us posts, articles, videos, and/or sermons that you’ve written, or share what is shaping you so we can share with others.

We’ll continue to keep you updated about future gatherings as one way to spotlight work God is already doing to bring this community together. Many friends in this space are planning to be at the Christian Investment Forum that John Siverling hosts August 14-16 in Asheville, North Carolina and we’d encourage you to check that out!

We’re grateful to be on this journey with you and excited for what’s to come!

The Faith Driven Investor Team

This article was originally published at The Wall Street Journal.

The Faith Driven Investing community often faces the dilemma of discerning the different choices between investments and donations. Do we prioritize financial returns or social impact? Or is there a way to get both?

Neither of these questions provide obvious answers, and this recent article from The Wall Street Journal highlighted the fact that the faith community is not alone in this predicament. Read how Calpers—The California Public Employee’s Retirement System—is handling their approach to social activism and hear other financial leaders respond to their divestment strategy.

— by Heather Gillers

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System was one of the first public-pension systems to tie its investments to social activism. Now it is having second thoughts.

In the last two years, its directors have opposed proposals to sell stocks in private prisons, gun retailers and companies tied to Turkey because of the potential for lost revenue and skepticism about whether divestment forces social change. One of these directors is now urging the system, also known as Calpers, to end its ban on stocks tied to tobacco, a policy in place since 2000.

“I do see a change,” said that director, California police sergeant Jason Perez, in an interview. “I think our default is to not divest.”

Calpers isn’t the only system wrestling with these new doubts. Rising funding deficits are prompting public officials and unions across the U.S. to reconsider the financial implications of investment decisions that reflect certain social concerns. The total shortfall for public-pension funds across the U.S. is $4.2 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

New York state’s Democratic comptroller and unions representing civil service workers oppose a bill in the Legislature to ban fossil fuel investments by the state pension fund. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, vetoed legislation last year that would have forced divestment of state pension dollars from companies that avoid cleaning up Superfund sites by declaring bankruptcy…

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal.

This article was originally published here.
Check out Bill High’s Website for other quality content!

— by Bill High

You never know who you’ll end up sitting next to when you fly. But whether you think about it or not, your neighbor on the plane has a story—a lifetime of stories that has just intersected with your own.

Even though I was one of the first to board, I sighed as I caught sight of my seat—a middle one between two very large men.

I scrunched as best as I could and even as the plane accelerated to the first announcement the man on my right sunk into a deep sleep—upright at least. But the man to my left sat upright and made my plight easier.

His gaze out the window was consistent, even unfriendly. His weather-stained face and fully thinned gray hair suggested someone with lots of hours in the sun. He crossed his arms, and one trembled steadily. Parkinson’s, I guessed. I leaned towards him and asked simply, “Where are you heading?”

“Home,” he said.

“Where’s home?” And soon, while not a rolling, easy conversation, the story slowly came out. He and his wife spent the winter in McAllen, Texas. They’d been going there for years to get out of the cold Iowa winters. He let it slip that this was likely their last winter in McAllen.

They’d farmed for all his adult life. He and his wife had been married 67 years. They’d wed when he’d just turned 20, and she was 22. Together, they had three kids, and those kids had managed four of their own. One son had stayed to farm. The other two had left to make their life in cities of their own choosing.

A grandson had taken up the farming bug too. He’d gotten hold of his first quarter section. He was the likely succession plan for the family farm. He told me in no uncertain terms, “It was a tough way to make a living.”

I asked him about his best days as a farmer, and he told me of an impromptu trip. He’d bought a new 1967 Ford pick-up truck with a camper for $2700 (not $27,000—he laughed about that), and they’d taken the kids out of school. They drove to Florida and did the Disney World thing. They camped out and did the whole trip for $500. He chuckled as he said, “It’d be hard to do that today.”

But the good days seemed to be in the rearview mirror. They’d put the mobile home in McAllen up for sale, and they were going home to Iowa “to die.” He was too old and unsteady to drive a tractor, and his wife had just had surgery on an ankle.

THE WEALTH OF A LIFETIME OF STORIES

I realized there was a lifetime of stories sitting to my left, and I’d only heard an hour’s worth on a plane ride. I hoped he’d tell his kids and grandkids his stories, especially the one about Disney World and the $2700 Ford pick-up. Those were good days, and they were part of his story.

What are the stories you want the next generations to know?

Share the fun stories along with the lessons learned and mistakes made. Tell about your triumphs and struggles, and of the experiences that shaped your values.

Your stories are treasure to pass on to the next generations.

This article was originally published here.
Check out Ronald Blue Trust for other quality content!

— by Ronald Blue Trust

Every organization has a What, a How, and a Why. Our What is wealth management and trust services. Our How is through experienced financial advisors building relationships and applying tools such as proprietary financial planning software, investment vehicles, and estate planning strategies. But it’s our Why that sets us apart from other wealth management and trust companies. Why is what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning – it’s our reason, cause, and purpose for what we do.

Ronald Blue Trust is not simply a financial planning, investment management, trust services, or estate planning company. We believe we do all of those things with excellence, but essentially seek to help our clients gain clarity and confidence around their finances. And we firmly believe that when our clients live with clarity and confidence about money – without conflict, anxiety, or fear – their lives are richer and more fulfilling. They can envision and act on their Why.

The vision of helping people seek and live their Why was one of the cornerstones on which Ron Blue established Ronald Blue & Co. in 1979. Ron felt challenged and called to help people become better stewards of their wealth and have a better relationship with money by using not just technical expertise, but biblical principles as well. Ronald Blue Trust clients have come to us, and stay with us, because they are attracted to our uncommon approach to wealth management. Read more about how we integrate biblical principles into financial planning and watch our video story by clicking the image below.

Our friend Jerry Bowyer recently interviewed Ron Blue and Karen Guess to discuss the relationship between greed and material wealth. While Western culture tends to view materialism as something that only wealthy people experience, Ron Blue’s trip to Africa pointed to the fact that it is more of a human problem than a social one. See what else they had to say in the full interview below.

read original article at Forbes

Ron Blue and the late Larry Burkett double-handedly created the faith and finance movement among evangelicals in the 1970s. This was a time of rapid acceleration in the number of people (including Jimmy Carter) who publicly declared themselves to be ‘born again’. Chuck Colson wrote a book with that title. The social movement grew rapidly and institutions developed to serve it. Ron and Larry became that movement’s financial counselors.  Without them, there is no Dave Ramsey.

I interviewed Ron recently and he told me that the major turning point in his understanding about faith and finance came when he was visiting a friend in Africa. His friend lived in a mud hut perched atop a small patch of dirt. Pastor Daniel was, by American standards, quite poor materially. Ron asked him what the most important spiritual challenge which his African Christian parishioners faced. When the pastor answered, “Materialism”, Ron was shocked. Ron had somehow imbibed the notion that materialism was a malady of the wealthy Northwest quadrant of humanity, not the poor Southeast. It’s then that he realized that greed was a universal human problem. It afflicts both rich and poor and there is no income level so high that greed cannot sour it with discontent. Any economic class can feel financial fear. Any economic class can feel satisfied. Any class can be generous. Any class can be needy. Any class can worship money imbuing it with attributes that move it from useful tool to pitiless master.

In my experience people tend to think of people who work in finance as particularly susceptible to the vice called greed. Pastors and professors can rail against Wall Street, but are the preaching classes more generous than the financial classes? Do faculty show more generosity in foregoing pay increases in order to lessen the burden on their ‘customers’ than money managers? Ron tells the story of a CPA who had 85 pastors for whom he prepared tax returns and not one of them were tithers. I’ve seen rich people stab one another in the back for monetary advantage, but I also had a homeless friend whom I saw withhold funds that he owed to another man (a homeless vet suffering from PTSD) so he could buy tobacco. Pastor Tim Keller once said that in all his years of serving congregations no one had ever confessed to being guilty of the sin of greed—which is probably an indicator that maybe we all are.

I sat down across a Skype line with Ron and Karen recently and you can listen to the audio of that interview here and read a partial transcript below. Both are edited for clarity.

Note: While I do not have direct business dealings with Ron, I have spoken at events held by institutions with which he has been associated, such as Ronald Blue & Co. (which he founded but is no longer associated with), as well as Kingdom Advisors, and the Ronald Blue Institute at Indiana Wesleyan University. I have not received speaker’s fees from these events, though I did accept travel and lodging reimbursements.

Jerry Bowyer: There are stories of very poor people in “Never Enough?”. And there are stories of very rich people in “Never Enough?”.  And that tells me that these principles apply to the very rich and the very poor and everyone in between; is that right?

Karen Guess: Yes, it is. And I think that was what was partly exciting about writing it; they’re real stories, but getting to kind of express the principles in various ways through people that we knew.

And my second story that I was going to tell you was my favorite, because my dad picked mine, was Pam’s story, because Pam is somebody I know personally.  Hers is in the last chapter.  And I admire her from the bottom of my toes in terms of her professionalism ‑‑ she is just a woman of great class in her industry.

And her story is one of being humble through a season of being a single parent and choosing, even though she was a financial professional who knew all the stuff, she heard a sermon one Sunday at church just about the very basic principles of ordering your priorities and went home and had a conversation with her little girls — they were school-aged at the time – and said girls, this is what we’re going to do, let’s talk about how owe spend our money and they reoriented the way they spent.  And they had monthly meetings going forward.  And so I just appreciated the humility that she had to accept the fact that the principles are true no matter what your life experience is, and she just took a step back in her own life when it was time and reapplied them.

Bowyer: I think my favorite story in the book is a story that I’ve heard you tell before, Ron, which is when you were visiting Pastor Daniel in Kenya. And he’s living there with his wife and several children, and they’re in the mud hut on the edge of the village.  Chickens are pecking around and doing all the stuff that chickens do there in the front yard that isn’t really a yard.  And kids are playing with batteries in the dirt.  And you ask him, what’s the biggest challenge in the African church, and he answers, materialism.  How did that answer shift your view of the world?

Ron Blue: That had dramatic and ‑‑ that happened in 1980 or ’81, so almost forty years ago. But what it revealed in an instant that money was always related to the heart and that the true spiritual challenge was never money issues; it was always heart issues.  So it changed the way I thought about money, and it changed the way that I’ve counseled over the years.  And a line that I used all the time and a belief that I have, is that money issues are always symptomatic of what’s going on spiritually; even if you’re a non-Christian, there still are values and priorities and goals that you have, and you reflect them through your checkbook.  And I think the most objective measurement of spirituality is how you spend your money.  You reveal it through your checkbook and through your credit card statements, and tax returns, and so forth.  A very objective look at our finances, or at our spirituality through our checkbook.

And that instance with that pastor really got me started down that track.  And it also made me realize that the amount of money was not the issue.  I thought — before he said that — that materialism and consumerism was only an American problem.  But when that happened, I said oh, my goodness; it’s universal and it’s a disease of the heart.

So it changed the way I gave advice, it changed the way I wrote, the way I thought.  It really set me on a course.  And I look at it and say God was so involved in that that ‑‑ it was his doing to make sure that I had the right attitude about money.

Bowyer: I think the naïve discussion about money and the heart and greed is that greed is a rich-person problem.

Blue: Yep.

Bowyer: But it’s a person problem.

Blue: Yep.

Bowyer: Rich can be greedy or generous, middle class can be greedy or generous, poor people can be greedy or generous.

Guess: Yeah.

Blue: Yeah.