subscribe to the podcast here

We’re so excited to share a conversation today that we think is long overdue. If you’ve been following the website, you’ve no doubt seen the name Jerry Bowyer as we’ve featured several of his blog posts (including “Jesus’ Terrible Financial Advice,” “How God’s Work is the Model for Your Work” and others)—all of which are must-reads. 

Jerry is a leading thinker in finance and economics and a frequent contributor for Forbes and Townhall. His writing has been influential in the Faith Driven Investor movement, and we think you’ll enjoy our conversation.

Tune in to hear Jerry’s thoughts on how to read the Bible, how to live like Jesus, and how to invest as faithfully as we possibly can. 

Useful Links:

Jesus’ Terrible Financial Advice

What Does Jesus Teach About Investing?

How God’s Work is a Model for Your Work

subscribe to the podcast here

We’re living in unprecedented times. Coronavirus continues to spread, and the fear and anxiety attached to it are moving even faster. It’s no secret the effects this pandemic is having on the economy and investing market. So, what do we do?

That’s the question we posed to James Cham, a venture capital investor with Bloomberg Beta. He provided a unique and positive spin on everything happening worldwide, and we’re excited to share his encouraging words amidst these challenging days.

If this episode encourages you, we hope you share it with others who may need an uplifting word. As always, thanks for listening!

Useful Links:

An Interview with James Cham

@jamescham

James Cham LinkedIn

This article was originally published here by The Gospel Coalition.

We’re huge fans of Finny, Robin, Jason and the team at Eventide, and love the way that they are taking a redemptive look at investing. We recently featured Finny on our podcast, and it was great hearing his perspective on the influence of capital to shape the world for good. Some of our friends at The Gospel Coalition recently did a story on Eventide’s work. We’re excited to share it with you:

by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

While Christian ethics around trade (be fair) and services (don’t cheat) and payments (don’t withhold them) is as old as Proverbs, the modern market is a complicated place.

“Most Christians are so removed from their money they don’t even know where it is.”

“One of the great financial developments is the role of an intermediary, such as a bank,” said Greg Phelan, assistant professor of economics at Williams College. “You and I—and almost everybody—would rather just deposit at the bank and withdraw when we need than figure out what small businesses or mortgages to lend to. I don’t have that expertise. And I don’t want to make loans that come due in years.”

It’s a wonderful, common-grace development that aids human flourishing. But it does mean people don’t directly oversee how their money is invested.

The same principle holds for stock-market investments—it takes so much time and energy to figure out which companies are worth buying that most people pay someone else to do it.

Add to that mutual funds (which ease risk by holding a little bit of a lot of companies) and company-provided 401(k) retirement plans (where employees often have little to no control over the investments) and most Christians are so removed from their money they don’t even know where it is.

And that level of confusion isn’t even the biggest part of the problem.

Sunday-to-Monday Gap

Today’s faith-and-work experts call it the “Sunday-to-Monday gap”; older faith-and-work experts called it the “sacred/secular divide.”

They’re talking about the disconnect between worshiping in a church pew one day and making photocopies in the office the next. Over the past few decades, the faith-and-work movement has been working to reconcile the two through books, conferences, podcasts, and fellows programs.

But if it’s hard for a Christian to puzzle out how God is redeeming emails and sales calls, imagining his will for savings accounts or retirement plans is even harder.

Especially because, for a long time, the gold standard for investing was to “maximize shareholder value” at any cost. Good investors didn’t waste their clients’ money on companies that didn’t have high, quick returns. Christian businessmen, who sat in the same MBA classes as everyone else, maximized profits to serve their clients and to give to the church.

Before Eventide was founded, others felt the same angst that Kuruvilla had. In 1992, Arthur Ally launched a mutual fund that screened out companies making money off abortion, pornography, alcohol, tobacco, and casino gambling. (Today the Timothy Plan also screens for “anti-family entertainment and alternative lifestyles.”)

Ally started the National Association of Christian Financial Consultants (NACFC) in 1997, the same year Larry Burkett started pulling Christian advisers together in what would become Kingdom Advisors (then known as the Christian Financial Professionals Network).

But still, the idea behind biblically responsible investing was young. The faith-and-work movement was just starting to bubble. Most people yet hadn’t considered God’s intention for their workdays—much less for business or investing.

Starting Eventide

In 2008, Kuruvilla, John, and a few others started Eventide Asset Management. (The name is Old English for “evening” and was chosen because humanity is in the evening of this present age while also being in the dawn of the next age—already, but not yet, redeemed.)

They sought companies that created “compelling value for the global common good”—in other words, companies that prospered by providing quality goods and services, stewarding creation, and treating employees, customers, and stockholders with integrity. They invested in a pharmaceutical company working to cure intestinal diseases, a paper company with sustainable practices, and a company supporting open-source software.

“For the first year, we started by investing the money of our friends and family,” John said. “We got a little over a million under management.” (It sounds like a lot, but Eventide’s revenue from that year was only about $10,000.)

The second year, financial advisers from organizations like Kingdom Advisors and NACFC—places that “were already passionate about aligning their values and investing”—brought Eventide’s investment amount up to $7 million, John said.

The third year, faith-based investors pushed Eventide investments up to $21 million. The fourth, to $34 million, and the fifth to $86 million. And then came year six.

Check out the rest of this article here!

This article was originally published here.

Check out Townhall Finance for other quality content!

by Jerry Bowyer

I wrote several months ago about New Testament scholar (read here and here), Ben Witherington III, and his book, A Week in the Life of Corinth. What I find most fascinating about the book is the degree to which Christians were integrated into the economic life of the city.

For instance, there is Erastus, the city manager of Corinth (in Greek, oikonomos, or ‘economist’; in Latin, aedile). St. Paul refers to him in Romans 16:23 as well as in 2 Timothy 4:20. According to Cicero (On the Law, Book iii) this office had wide authority including the role of treasurer, and public works and public festivals. Cicero explicitly mentions upkeep of temples as well as other public works. Erastus is mentioned in the Pauline epistles without hint of reproach or disapproval for his role as chief economic official in a city in which paganism was thoroughly interlaced with economic life.

Interestingly, one of the early controversies in the Corinthian church was over the matter of eating meat sacrificed to idols. Pagan temples frequently involved animal sacrifice, and the by-produce of such sacrifice is (if the animal is not completely immolated) meat. Such meat could be consumed as part of the ritual, or could be sold later for consumption in restaurants or in homes. Some of the Christian community in Corinth considered such meat to be off limits for consumption. Others were convinced that consuming the meat was not forbidden. Paul agrees with the latter holding that consumption is permitted, but urges those who correctly see themselves at liberty to eat, not do so in a way that hurts the faith of their ‘weaker brothers’. Paul puts liberty above any principle of purity via separation, but puts love above liberty.  One wonders how Christians might respond to this controversy if these passages were not in the Bible. Imagine how Christians who ate meat which was butchered during pagan rituals would be treated by their more conservative separationist brethren. The direction of Paul’s ruling in the matter is towards wide latitude when it comes to Christians dealing with a wide array of types of people and business enterprises. But the fact that the enterprise in which those animals were sacrificed to pagan gods was overseen financially and to some degree operationally by a manager who drew a salary from them, who was also a Christian who was on good terms with the Apostle Paul, gives some indication how much liberty of conscience was permitted in economic dealings.

I asked Dr. Witherington about this issue and he pointed out that Christians in Corinth were not isolated financially and economically from their community. Even Judaism (which, for good reason, was more separationist in its tendencies) was integrated into that community. They “did not live as the Amish do, Qumran was an exception. Christianity was maybe the 1st genuinely evangelistic religion in world history. They had to have an open face to the world.”

When I asked him about the meat sacrificed to idols controversy and suggested that this gave wide latitude for economic dealing he said, “That’s right. Where the line was drawn was in regard to worship. It was not okay to go the pagan meals in the pagan temples.” Paul does mention one other restriction which is if someone puts food in front of you, and says “This was sacrificed to idols.” You are not to eat so that you “do not cause them to stumble”. Who is the they/them who might stumble? According to Witherington, this refers to the separationist who is offered the food. They would not want to shame their host by turning down food offered in hospitality, but would also be conscience stricken at the idea of eating meat sacrificed to idols. This creates a social no-win situation where they have to humiliate their hosts or violate their conscience. According to Witherington, for the more mature Christian to use his or her liberty to eat at such a time puts the less mature Christian in an awkward situation, in which they might give in to social pressure and do something they believe is wrong. Interestingly, says Witherington, “The weak are those who have too many scruples, not too few.”

I asked Witherington if this principle applied to ‘sin screen’ investing in which money managers urge people to use their services in order to avoid participating in evil by investing in companies whose businesses might include distribution of pornography or tobacco. In other words, are such investments analogous to meat sacrificed to idols? Witherington said that they were. That these were matters of individual choice, but that if someone believed it was wrong to invest in these things, than that belief means that it is genuinely wrong for them to do it: “Paul says whatever YOU do that is not in faith is wrong for you.” But that there was no universal moral obligation to refrain from such investing: “It’s going to differ for people.” He pointed out that as a United Methodist minister, he’s called up to make selections as to what he might object to including in his pension plan. Some choose certain restrictions — say, no investing in companies that deal with nuclear waste, but, “Some just throw up their hands and say: We live in a fallen world, virtually everything I invest in is going to be tainted in some ways.”

I already thought of Christianity as a religion which allows a rather wide zone of freedom, but I think Witherington’s research helped me to see how very wide that zone was. It is a strange paradox that a religion which allows such high degrees of freedom has such a strong reputation for lack of freedom.

You can listen to the full interview here.

This article was originally published here.

Check out Make Your Money Count for other quality content!

by Rachel McDonough

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20a)

In the same way that the political ambassadors of our day serve as representatives of their home countries while living abroad, we, as followers of Christ, live on the earth as representatives of heaven.

We are here to represent the culture and the values of the kingdom of heaven, and to be a conduit through which God makes His appeal. But can we do that in our investments?

As we mature in the Lord, all areas of our lives increasingly reflect a culture that contrasts sharply with the world around us. Rather than simply seeking returns or trying to gain wealth, our investment choices become a reflection of our understanding of God’s ways and nature.

Motivated by our desire to accurately represent Him and honor Him, a greater level of care is needed to ensure we understand how portfolio profits are derived. Given the popularity in less transparent, fund-style investments, many investors simply don’t know which companies they own. Thus many are unwittingly profiting from industries like tobacco, gambling, or abortion that they would find objectionable and directly at odds with God’s plan for humanity.

As an investor of God’s money, we can apply an “Ambassador Filter” over every investment opportunity by asking myself these questions:

• Am I representing Jesus well as His ambassador if I invest His money in this company or fund?

• Dose this company honor, serve, and bless people, as members (or potential members) of God’s expansive family?

• Do I have enough information to know if this investment would be pleasing to God?

This article was originally published here by Inspire Investing.

Check out Inspire Investing for more quality content!

by Dr. Erik Davidson, CFA

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

John 14:27

As a follow-up to my piece, Troubles, a few weeks ago, I offer you some of my further thoughts on navigating the current market environment as a biblically responsible investor.

From an economic perspective, the Coronavirus pandemic is both a demand-shock and a supply-shock. So, as opposed to a significant hurricane or blizzard or even the 9/11 terrorist attack, this exogenous event may not simply push back economic activity, but rather may actually destroy it. Therefore, it is highly likely we have already entered a recession. Monetary and fiscal stimulus are critical components for an economic recovery. They must be done. However, in and of themselves, these economic policy levers are not enough. The new health concerns that have emerged must be addressed over the coming months, into the next flu season, and for years thereafter. Further, consumer and business confidence must be restored. This will simply take time and there are no short-cuts around it. Lastly, while we all long for a return to “normal,” it is likely that when we do emerge from this crisis (and we will!), life and the economy will be different than it was before. Specifically, our day-to-day lives and the economic environment will be changed in terms of travel, social interaction, entertainment, health care, the social safety net, politics, globalization, etc.

As we face these challenges, we must remember that it is buried very deep within our human nature to want to take action in the face of adversity. Especially in times like these, our natural behavioral instincts (incl. survival and herding) activate into high gear and we rally under the banner of “Don’t just sit there—do something!” Against that instinct, however, the Bible gives us the challenging guidance to “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). It is almost as if our command as believers is counterintuitively to “Don’t just do something—sit there!”

In our hearts, we know that this is wise instruction, but it is a tough pill to swallow as the stock market plunges. Fortunately, most investment experts wisely support this concept of prudence by advocating a mindset of calmness, resolution, and perspective. However, many times their advice is offered as a “To Don’t List,” e.g., “Don’t panic!” “Don’t sell!” “Don’t abandon your plan!” “Don’t capitulate!” or “Don’t liquidate!” All these are wise guidelines, but they go against our very strong human reflex to actually do something!

Therefore, in contrast to a “To Don’t List,” I share with you a list of proactive actions that can be taken by investors right now. This is based on my 35 years of investment experience, but equally on my 45 years of being a follower of Jesus Christ. This Bear Market “To Do List” is called “P.E.A.C.E.”

P.E.A.C.E.

Pray:

Before anything else, let’s be sure to pray. Let’s be on our knees crying out to God for healing, comfort, and provision for those who have been affected by the Coronavirus. Let’s pray and fast in support of the global forces of human ingenuity, science, and wisdom being brought to bear against this modern-day pestilence. Lastly, let’s pray that through this adversity, many will come into a personal relationship with God. Praying is something we can “do.”

Engage:

Engagement is something that we can definitely do in this environment. Even if they are not afflicted by the Coronavirus, so many around us have been impacted adversely. Within the proper protocols of “social distancing,” let’s engage with our family, friends, and community who need our assistance—neighbors who need to be checked on, seniors who need some shopping done, or maybe some health-care or emergency-services workers who need help with their out-of-school children. Let’s look for ways to support local businesses and their employees who are suffering dramatic downturns in their revenues. How can we support those in our communities who are most economically vulnerable? Engage is something we all can “do.”

Assistance:

Unfortunately, economic downturns often lead to a significant decline in charitable giving—just when the needs are at their greatest. Therefore, something that we can “do” is to maintain, if not even increase, our donations to our church, community organizations, medical-research charities, etc. They need it now more than ever. Assistance is something we all can “do.”

Cash:

In all market environments, bull and bear, one essential thing that investors must “do” is ensure that they hold an adequate amount of cash. This cushion mitigates the risk of having to “sell into a hole” during a market downturn when money is needed to cover expenses. Most financial planning experts recommend that anywhere from 6 to 24 months of living expenses be held in safe, low-yielding cash, savings, or money market accounts. If an investor does not currently have that amount of money set aside, then now is the time to do it, even though the market has sold off so dramatically. However, even in such a volatile market environment, investors should be cautious about holding too much cash, especially with current interest rates so low. Remember that at 0.25% per year, an investor is on course to double her money in 288 years! Having the right amount of cash—not too little, but not too much—that is another thing that investors can “do” in this market environment.

Ease into the stock market:

In these trying times, our “fight or flight” instincts are particularly pronounced. So while many investors are grappling with their “flight” impulses, others are engaging with their desire to “fight,” i.e., buy at these significantly depressed levels. Sometimes this is likened to trying to catch a falling knife. From our perspective, the stock market’s downside risk is still substantial. However, at -30% from the all-time high and with valuations much more attractive now, we believe that we are likely closer to the bottom than the top. Further, being a provider of investment capital in such dire times also meets a higher, noble purpose. Therefore, what investors can “do” if they have cash ready to be deployed is start easing into the market. A “dollar cost averaging” (DCA) strategy is a good method to minimize the emotional toils of a turbulent market by committing to invest a set dollar amount on a predetermined schedule, come what may. For those investors who are already fully invested, there is still something that they can “do,” namely rebalance. In rebalancing, investors make adjustments to their portfolio at the margin to bring it back to its target percentage allocations. In other words, trimming down (not selling out completely) some of those investments in asset categories that have done relatively well (e.g., bonds) and redeploying the proceeds into asset categories that have done relatively poorly (e.g., stocks). These are some prudent things that investors can “do” to ease into the stock market in the face of the sell-off.

In conclusion, I urge you to keep the faith as you grapple with your “To Don’t” and “To Do” lists under these stressful conditions. It affects all of us! Even Paul wrote, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15)!

And when grip of fear tightens, just remember the promise we have received:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Matthew 11:28-29

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON COVID-19, PLEASE SEE OUR PAGE HIGHLIGHTING SOME OF THE BEST RESOURCES OUT THERE FOR FAITH DRIVEN INVESTORS & ENTREPRENEURS IN THIS SEASON.