Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.
by Ali Motroni
The World Economic Forum coined 2020 “The Great Reset” in reference to this “rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”
In my opinion, the question is not, “Can 2020 serve as a reset?” It’s clearer than ever that the world is not working for everyone. The more interesting and important question to ask ourselves is, “Do we want one?” And if we do, what is the role of the faith community in creating one?
The pandemic didn’t create inequities, but it unearthed and magnified existing issues that have been humming under the hood of capitalism—making it run and growing louder over time. Maybe we have ignored the “check engine light” in the past, but now the capitalism car has started making strange noises, and smoke is pouring from the hood. What’s worse? When we pop it open and look underneath, we discover just how many things have stopped working and how many weren’t actually installed correctly in the first place.
What exactly is causing the smoke? In 2019, the typical white family in the US had $184,000 in wealth, and the typical black family had $23,000.[1] Oxfam reports that from March 18, 2020, to the end of 2020, global billionaire wealth increased by $3.9 trillion. By contrast, global workers’ combined earnings fell by $3.7 trillion.[2] An estimated 2.5 billion people around the world don’t have access to basic sanitation systems,[3] and an estimated 40 million people are trapped in human trafficking, many of whom are creating products we use in our daily lives.[4]
I am not here to argue that wealth is evil or that those with privilege should feel guilty having access to opportunity. I am here to propose that, in following the example of Jesus, we should care about the lives of the marginalized—the gaps in resources, opportunity, and economic inclusion. We should seek to humanize the people beneath the issues, to love our neighbors in more strategic ways by fighting for inclusive, sustainable systems, and to optimize our resources and influence to create a world that works for everyone, aligning with Jesus’ heart for “the least of these.”[5]
As a broad stroke, for those of us with more privilege, economic systems, racial sentiment, and financial markets have all been working in our favor. Are we willing to consider that, though systems have been working for many of us, they haven’t been working for everyone? Are we willing to usher in a world that benefits others even if it takes sacrifice from us?
I will spend the rest of this paper exploring three specific postures for the Christian community to assume if we want to play a meaningful role in this cultural moment—drawing on the example of Jesus in caring for the marginalized and grounded in the perspective of Biblical authority.
Knowing our Neighbors
Years ago, I heard a homily from Father James Finley at a Contemplative Prayer meeting in St. Monica’s Church on finding the Holiness in ordinary, non “spiritual” events—holding a loved one’s hand as they die, getting married, living alone for the first time, seeing a shooting star. While this contemplative thread is present in various Christian traditions, Father James Finley’s description of “spontaneous moments of contemplation”—when Heaven feels closer, and the veil is thin enough to encounter God in a new way—opened my heart to these unexpected holy moments. There are two specific experiences I’d like to share.
In April of 2020, Black Lives Matter protests exploded around the world in response to the viral video of George Floyd’s tragic death and, even more deeply, as a response to hundreds of years of inequity and generational grief. I marched in Venice, California with a sign that read “Privilege is thinking something isn’t a problem because it doesn’t apply to you.” I watched one of the key activists at the march yell, “Say their names,” while the crowd yelled the names of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and others, and I felt the heartbeat of God rising up in me, hurting with the hurt, grieving with the grief-stricken. I thought of the
Beatitudes, a beautiful biblical excerpt where Jesus proclaims blessing on those who are poor in spirit, meek, and mourning and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.[6] As I looked around, I knew I was in the midst of the people Jesus proclaimed blessing over.
A couple years prior to the BLM protests, I went to the Women’s March at City Hall in Los Angeles. The march was about women’s rights, immigration, and equity, amongst other things. I grew up in South Carolina, an epicenter of conservative thought, and found myself in LA at a pro-immigration march, feeling genuinely out of place.
This is what I call good friction. No matter which side of the political aisle we sit on, it’s good to feel the friction of knowing the people whom our decisions and votes are affecting.
I walked up to City Hall to see around 70 Mexican teenagers chanting “Education, not deportation.” Education, not deportation. Let that sink in for a minute. When I heard the kids chanting, my heart exploded. Education, not deportation. These teenagers didn’t understand the economic or political narrative behind immigration issues. At 15 years old, they simply felt the weight of not being wanted, of not belonging, and of knowing the types of opportunities they have in the US are so much greater than where they came from. I wept as I thought about how we’ve made immigration into a political issue when at the deepest level, it’s a human issue. I felt Jesus weep with me.
I’m aware that, in some Christian circles, it is not popular to stand with these communities. I have friends who wouldn’t participate in the collective grief and cries for equity in the racial justice marches because they didn’t agree with the organization Black Lives Matter. While I understand the sentiment of not wanting to support an organization that doesn’t fully align with your values, I would like to gently suggest that we as the church are missing the point when we choose to ‘make a point’ instead of humbling ourselves and seeking to understand the broken. If we desire to follow the example of Jesus, we cannot ignore that He consistently loved and associated with the broken people from whom the Pharisees tried to distance themselves.[7] He was vehemently on the side of the poor, the marginalized, the hurting, and the undervalued. He was on their side when it cost Him His reputation, His safety, and, ultimately, His life.
To participate meaningfully in any “great reset,” it first and foremost requires empathy. It requires repentance from deeply ingrained prejudice—or fear of “the other”—that we all carry at some level and recognition that, especially as Christians saved by grace, we should seek to see the Imago Dei in everyone. This means challenging ourselves to find ways to get
relationally proximate to those Jesus spent the majority of His ministry serving, in order that we might love and serve them as He did. It takes putting political ideologies and pharisaical doctrinaire on the shelf and allowing the spirit of grace, love, and compassion to move our hearts towards empathy and understanding for the broken and marginalized. Only then can we make decisions that deeply affect others.
Loving our Neighbors
Another beautiful, yet historically controversial aspect of Jesus’ ministry on Earth was His willingness to flip tables[8] and power structures. He didn’t simply have His neighbors over for dinner (albeit an important act of Christian love), but He also examined the systems and religious structures that kept groups marginalized. Loving our neighbors isn’t just about meeting the needs of the individual in front of us. It’s about leveraging our power, privilege, influence, and wealth to transform systems which perpetuate inequities and circumstances that keep our neighbors down in the first place.
One of my first experiences seeing cyclical poverty face to face was many years ago while living in Indianapolis. Upon an unexpected prodding from the Holy Spirit, I met a homeless family on the streets and spent many hours with the mom and her seven kids over the course of my two
years in the city. It began as one of the more uncomfortable versions of “loving my neighbor” that I had experienced as I found myself deeply involved in their lives— helping them move from a shelter to government subsidized housing, celebrating as the mom got a job and then promoted, and spending time with the kids as they grew up.
Fast forward several years, and I have found myself in a position where I think of Tanee and her family often. I think about the issues they faced and the Imago Dei I believe they hold as humans, and I think about tackling systemic poverty in more strategic ways. In that season, “loving my neighbor” looked like hanging at the playground weekly with 50 kids under the age of 13 and sitting and listening to the struggles of the moms. And as I’ve grown in maturity, I believe that the call to “love my neighbor” should include those things but should also grow in sophistication and strategy as I continue to understand the world and its systemic issues in new ways.
As believers grow in emotional maturity and cultural understanding, the way we love others should also grow in maturity and depth. If we do not address systems and structures, then we do not get a true reset, we get a Band-Aid. Historically, those who made the rules are also those who have most benefited from them. Our goal should be to create an optimized system that works for all, rather than one that is maximized for some. Are we willing to critically and humbly allow our love for our neighbors to pervade deeper into our decision making?
This means advocating for the marginalized in our work, our purchasing, our investing, the ways we are voting, and who we invite into our circles. It means intentionally auditing these things and asking ourselves the challenging question of, “Do my priorities reflect the priorities of Jesus?”
True “reset” takes more than good intentions. It takes more than philanthropy. It takes engaging private capital for solutions. It takes human-centered design. It takes building bridges between faith-based organizations and government, nonprofit, and secular organizations. It takes critically looking at what we can preserve that’s good and beautiful and what we need to fix to help others flourish. It takes aligning our actions and our decisions with our love.
Investing in Our Neighbors
“When I can stand under the waterfall of infinite mercy and know that I am loved precisely in my unworthiness, then I can easily pass along mercy to you.”[9]
I love this imagery. Shortly after reading The Divine Dance for the first time, I took a trip to Yosemite and climbed underneath Yosemite Falls, letting the forceful water drench me as I held my arms up to the sky (on second thought, not my brightest idea). The power of the water reoriented my heart to think about abundance in a new way. What if I could be so drenched by Christ’s love and mercy that I could easily let it pass through me and trust that His abundance will continue drenching me? What if I don’t have to hold anything back because I have more than I’ll ever need? This is what it looks like to be working in step with the Spirit, prayerfully partnering to usher in His Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.
In imagining a new world—one that is equitable, just, and sustainable and one that is closer to God’s vision of Shalom—it is unwise and incomplete not to consider the role of capital. In the spirit of “reset” and in building a world that works for everyone, now is the time for the faith community to embody the “abundance mindset” that is our inheritance in Christ. Now is the time to strategically audit our lives and prayerfully consider what it means to love our neighbors by leveraging the resources we have been called to steward.
What role can impact investing play in the Christian’s redemptive toolkit? Why should we participate in this way?
We must align our hearts with our dollars. The Bible has over 2000 verses that address money, with a cornerstone verse on generous living in Matthew 6:21: “Where your money is, there your heart will be also.” While 88% of faith-based investors use some form of negative screening in their portfolios to eliminate companies misaligned with their values, only 11% allocate capital to impact investing.[10] This is an exciting chance for Christians to partner with Creator God (as well as fund managers and entrepreneurs) in innovating and designing companies that are making the world better for the marginalized. Strategic impact investing provides an
opportunity for Christians to be known for what we are “for”—creativity, compassion, equity, stewardship of the Earth, opportunity for all, and loving others—versus only for what we are against by participating solely in divestment strategies.
Not only is it our call as believers to intentionally consider the role of capital in loving our neighbors, but private capital is also the key to solving global social and environmental issues that cannot be solved with philanthropic dollars alone. In the United States, the amount of investment capital available is 10x that of annual charitable giving and government spending combined.[11] Imagine a world where all $52 trillion of professionally managed assets was invested according to generative values, supporting market-based solutions to global and domestic issues. While philanthropy plays an important role in social change, engaging across the asset class spectrum—from public equities to private debt to real estate—gives Christian investors a full set of levers to strategically press on in order to move the needle on the complex issues we really care about.
And finally, the more we learn, the more responsibility we have. Not only are we more aware of the smoke from the hood reminding us of underlying structural issues, but we also have more market-driven solutions available to us than we have ever had. There is a growing amount of evidence pointing to the strong financial performance of impact investments across public and private market asset classes over time.[12] There is an impact investing ecosystem that has exploded, with all the major asset managers and financial institutions on board. We have clearer impact measurement data, looking not just at direct impact but also at the
intersectional and secondary impact of investments.
Starting this journey—this journey of engaging all of our resources in creating an optimal world for all—can feel intimidating. At my firm, Align Impact, we spend 100% of our time and resources finding the most impactful investments across asset classes and building out customized strategies with our clients based on their impact and financial priorities. I am deeply passionate about walking alongside investors who want to tactically utilize their resources to participate in the redemptive work happening around us. After years of living in the divide between nonprofit and for-profit activities, I transitioned into impact investing as a way to integrate my love into my decision making and as a way to support others in the same journey of intentionality.
Being part of a “great reset” is not unique to Christians. Having roles of authority, influence, and the power to make decisions which affect the lives of others aren’t solely Christian privileges. What should set Christians apart, however, is the motivation with which we approach these conversations: through first knowing our neighbors and then by challenging ourselves to love them in deeper, more strategic ways, all from a mindset of abundance —knowing that we have all we need in Jesus.
Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.
by Chris Melendez
Together. What a powerful word. It represents a positive state we strive for in most areas of life, perhaps because it is in the very nature of our God. We see togetherness in the person of God in the Trinity and in the systems He created. In Genesis, the Word says, “Let us make…” and describes in detail the creation of a universe where its distinct components all work together in harmony. After the fall, we were separated from God, but He made a way for us to be together with Him again. Through Christ’s work on the cross, we can be united with Him for eternity. Romans tells us that for those who love God, He is working all things together for our good. As His image bearers, when we see areas of life that are broken, we share in God’s nature when we work together to create systems that work together.
One area of life that seems to be continually broken for many people is in managing money. Study after study and statistic after statistic show that a majority of people have some form of trouble or stress with their finances. Over my 20+ years of experience in creating and selling financial solutions with a variety of companies in payments, fintech, advising, and banking, I continue to see new and amazing technological advancements that make financial tasks faster and easier. For instance, you can pay with your mobile phone at a store or click a single button online to purchase almost anything you want or need and have it delivered to your door. Despite all of the advancements, we see the average person struggling now more than ever with money. Part of the problem will always stem from spiritual, emotional, and behavioral issues. But there’s another issue that makes it difficult for most people to understand and manage their finances. Money related systems are not working together to provide the customer with a unified, easy to use, and simple to understand experience that aids in better money decisions. There’s an opportunity here to help make these systems work together better.
The finances of consumers are a tangled web that span banking, investing, insurance, real estate, taxes, and more. When each of these verticals have varying objectives, approaches, and terminology, even simple questions for the consumer become complex…like, “How much money can I spend today?” Full context becomes so necessary for any financial professional to have meaningful engagements with customers. For most consumers, the financial guidance they get is one-size-fits-all. Some people have the luxury of an advisory professional working with them to give connected advice in all areas, but that is rare and usually only for those with higher net worth. The banking industry also continues to add new capabilities and functionality to help improve people’s experience with their money. But banking customers still need good advice on how to build a wise plan and make good spending decisions.
There’s a real opportunity here for banking and advisory services to work together for the good of the shared customer. Both businesses have made significant advancements in their respective areas, but they don’t seem to be helping people take an integrated approach to make planning and banking work together. In order to accomplish this, there needs to be a common framework from which both businesses can operate and communicate.
I like to draw a comparison here to the area of time management. There are so many amazing solutions and tools developed that continue to help us manage our time more efficiently. The advantage with those is that people get to leverage a common framework in time
measurement. Time has two forms of temporal measurement, the calendar and the clock. The calendar organizes intervals of time, and the clock is a mechanism that counts the passage of time. Any new technology that aids in time management gets to utilize these universally common measurements. Though time is always finite and money is not, we can still glean from the framework of time management to help us improve money management.
In my current endeavor, we did just that. We designed a solution around the idea of
establishing a common framework for money measurement. We developed a simple but effective money organization system that helps people build a wise plan and then integrate that plan right into their banking experiences. Their plan becomes the calendar, and their accounts become the clock. It works with any budget and with any bank or card account. Now, their existing bank accounts become the cash management solution they need to make wise financial decisions. Many people try to use a standard budgeting tool, but the numbers in the budget never line up with their bank account balances. The misalignment in numbers creates significant friction that keeps people stressed or so discouraged they just give up. Our system utilizes the money framework to keep their plans aligned with their accounts with less effort. This common money framework approach serves the do-it-yourself budgeter well but also empowers advisory and banking professionals with a more comprehensive system to help bring financial wellness to their customers.
When I thought about how to deliver this solution into the market, Kingdom impact was a priority. We needed to find a way to work with Christian organizations that had a shared mission. God delivered in a big way. Crown Financial is partnering with us to provide the solution to Christians that are seeking to steward their finances well. Also, Classical
Conversations is a Christian homeschool company that will offer our solution to parents looking for a way to model and teach financial stewardship to their children.
As we all know, practical solutions sometimes lack greater Kingdom impact if they are confined to just Christians. We also want to make sure we impact the financial industry at large to help solve this universal problem. God saw fit to bless us with relationships in both the banking and advisory space with men and women who love the Lord and have a passion for working together to serve their industries. For example, we are launching the solution with First Southern National Bank in Kentucky as a service for their bank customers. This relationship will be especially important as we test, learn how to develop the ideal experiences, and integrate the right technologies into the banking systems. Doxa Advisors out of Minnesota is working closely with us to ensure we are designing a solution that works well in the advisory space. Working together with partners in education, ministry, advisory, banking, and other verticals will allow us to learn more and develop a better solution to have greater Kingdom impact.
Managing money can result in some form of brokenness for so many people. It is a big problem to solve. But God has given us a model in His character and in His creation to help solve big problems. By His grace, we can work together with aligned partners to create systems that work together for the good of our communities.
by Luke Roush, Co-Founder, Sovereigns Capital
It takes about $200,000 in income and $1 million in stored wealth to be among the top 1%, globally. The Bible has a LOT to say about money, with specific caution around our hearts’ propensity towards the love of money. While this kind of margin is not something we should feel guilty about, it IS something we should steward with a great deal of prayer and counsel. If we believe that God owns it all—not just our tithe, but also our treasure—then the ways we as Believers manage margin should look different than the rest of the world. It is a short walk from ‘comfort’ to ‘complacency,’ so each of us must be bold in leaning in to our calling toward stewardship of the margin God has placed in our lives.
For the purposes of this article, I’ll focus on margin that God has not yet called us to philanthropically give away to the church or other operating charities. While that is where much of it is headed eventually, there is a pacing and cadence to how we give thoughtfully over time. Thanks to tax-advantaged vehicles like foundations, supported organizations, and donor advised funds, we are able to relinquish personal ownership over margin, while maintaining a measure of control over how it is managed. Our hope and expectation is that what begins as one talent will become many more talents to be given, while also having impact along the way. (Matthew 25:14-30)
Margin Management
So what does margin management look like for me, with margin that exists in my own donor advised fund or bank account? Several ideas come to mind:
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Evaluation Framework: My historical evaluation framework needs to evolve to include a heavier weighting on things like the missional potential (ref. WeldenField BAM Fund) of a company or fund and impact areas that the Holy Spirit has put on our family members’ hearts. More margin should enable more creative thinking in this area.
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First-Mover Risk: I need to experiment more. This doesn’t mean becoming foolish, but I want to take more “first mover” risk. There were first movers who took a risk on Sovereign’s in 2012, and I want to do the same with the emerging concepts of 2023. More margin needs to enable more of this behavior in my own personal stewardship.
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Investing in Community: For the limited investing I do outside of our fund complex at Sovereign’s, I want to co-invest with others who are feeling called in a similar direction. Part of this collaboration should involve inviting others into visibility on my personal portfolio and creating access into interesting investments that are available based on our last ten years of work in this arena. Using collective margin can help us push further and faster into the key issues of our time. More margin plus trusted communities like Christian Economic Forum enable collective action and impact at scale.
Stewarding Capital on Behalf of Others
What does this look like for the capital I/we steward on behalf of others (e.g., Funds, SPV’s, etc.)? Two ideas for consideration:
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Consent: When we’re stewarding capital on behalf of others, we need to be clear on the front-end about what values we will be representing as we go about our work. If we say, “This is what we are going to do,” then we need to do that (or get written consent if anything different). The broader ESG movement has gotten itself in trouble because there isn’t clarity or consent on the part of investors whose capital and influence are being stewarded by intermediaries in a manner inconsistent with the ultimate owners’ values. That isn’t working well. However, as faith-driven asset managers, we have an opportunity before a relationship begins to be bold with the vision we cast. We need to be OK with a conversation that challenges some of the clients we haven’t yet engaged with. We should have those conversations in a winsome manner, but simply “taking orders” at the asset management drive-thru window isn’t going to cut it if we want to be a faithful and value-added partner to our clients in managing the margin that God has given us and them.
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Sober Clarity: While investing personal margin can be fluid and evolutionary, investing margin on behalf of others requires focus and discipline. For those who are asset managers, staying within our thesis and maintaining clear communication along the way are imperative to ensuring alignment with our partners. We must resist the urge to conform to some of the behaviors that are so common in our industry—exaggeration, bravado, over optimism, and a catering to the emotions that so often drive action in the investing world, like fear and greed. I know I can do better in this area.
What might this look like for us as delegates? Two ideas we should embrace together are:
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Collaboration Groups: There are likely market-based approaches to many of the problems being addressed in the collaboration groups. Might we deploy some collective margin toward those challenges? Deploying margin to meet the needs of Afghani and Ukrainian refugees is one of the recent highlights of what this can look like for our community. Are there creative market-based solutions to scale that initiative? Launch Capital’s work to create sustainable refugee housing in Louisville, Kentucky, is a great example of this.
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Best Practices from Delegates: The Grove is a concept pioneered by Katherine and Alan Barnhart, which is a collective giving organization tied to Barnhart Crane and Rigging. Having learned a bit more about it in the last year, it’s been a HUGE encouragement to me. Might there be some opportunities to learn from that example? Illuminations is another collective giving effort which has helped to drive collaboration amongst the Bible translators toward speedier fulfillment of the Great Commission. What lessons could that work over the last 10+ years teach us?
Descriptive Not Prescriptive
As we engage with this topic, it’s important not to be prescriptive but, rather, descriptive of what solutions might look like. As we think about what market-based solutions for margin stewardship look like, the Marks of a Faith Driven Investor have been summarized in good working form. I believe the best work in this space will invite Believers into something to be FOR, rather than criticizing activities that we are against. In terms of attracting the next generation into our mission, a focus on positive screening will almost certainly be the more productive approach.
Iron Sharpening Iron
Because of the financial margin that God has blessed many of us with, it gets harder and harder for us to hear the truth. There are two reasons for this:
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When we have margin, we don’t need others as much, so we stop listening. (Note that this same risk exists with explicitly or implicitly behaving as though we don’t need God.)
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Many others in our communities want something from us, and, therefore, they aren’t as likely to tell us the truth.
In the last year, by God’s grace, I have had two delegates ask me questions that prompted deeper thinking into issues I needed to address in my life and our work at Sovereign’s. I’m grateful for their prodding, which was done in a winsome way. To be provocative, I think most of us are FAR too polite. We worry too much about what others might think, and we don’t say what we are thinking. There are ways to speak truth in love, and we need to do more of that proactively in our next 10 years together.
We need to BELIEVE what the Bible says in Proverbs 27:6 – “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” Offering thoughtful feedback to a brother or sister in Christ is one of the best ways we have to love them. We need to get past some of our politeness and actively invite feedback from folks who love Jesus, care about our mission, and can challenge us on how we are using the margin God entrusted to us.
In closure, I don’t want to look back in another 10 years and wish I would have taken more risk. I want to max out how I deploy the margin that God has entrusted to me. I want the collective margin that God has given all of us to be deployed toward solving some of the world’s greatest problems—not on our own power and knowledge but with God’s power and knowledge. That’s why we’re here—because we want to do this in community.
Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s 2019 Global Event.
