Eric Kim, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the billion-dollar fund of Goodwater Capital, shares what it means to have a shadow mission.

In the past investing has traditionally been viewed as a secular act. The expenditure of money, time, and talent in exchange for the expectation of suitable and appropriate profit.

In Matthew 6, Jesus says to store our treasures in heaven, not earth, and in this episode of the Faith Driven Investor Podcast, Finny Kuruvilla joins John and Richard to talk about what that might mean for investors.

Finny Kurruvilla joins us to talk about public equities with a specific focus on biotech and healthcare.

In this talk from the 2022 Faith Driven Investor Conference, Dr. Kuruvilla proposes that investing, when done strategically, can partly fulfill the call to serve the global poor.

Finny Kuruvilla—Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Eventide—unpacks how our investments can serve the greater good at our 2021 Faith Driven Investor Conference

Hear Finny Kuruvilla share the ways capital creates influence and impact all around the world.

Most of us have grown so accustomed to the wildly improbable that we can hardly appreciate how abnormal our world has become.

Hear Finny Kuruvilla share the ways capital creates influence and impact all around the world.

Finny Kuruvilla, of Eventide Funds, is a trusted and close friend of the faith driven investor community. One of his great passions is calling investors to check their hearts and consider the impacts of their investment practices.

Do you want to own companies that you are proud of?” Well, of course I do. But truth be told, I haven’t been paying that much attention. Kuruvilla defined good corporations as those that treated their workers well, which in turn engendered happy clients, demonstrated community-mindedness, environmental responsibility, etc.

We often get the question … it’s probably I would say the number one question that I’ve gotten over the years is how I as a physician got into investing, and helping start a mutual fund company.

On today’s episode, we’re talking to an expert on capital, influence, and how investments can serve the common good. Finny Kuruvilla is the Chief Investment Officer for Eventide Funds, and if you haven’t heard of them, you’re going to be glad you did.

Now, why is it hard to see this ownership today? Why has this question been … has it been so fundamentally obscured? Well, I think most of us, if we think about it, would agree that investing has long been divorced from this original and most basic purpose of simply supplying capital to support businesses.

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?

There is more at stake in investing than the risk of losing our money. There is also the risk of losing life’s wholeness. In this video, you’ll hear Eventide CIO Finny Kuruvilla, MD PhD talk about the ethical dimensions of investing using a passage from the biblical book of Proverbs.

One way to keep our focus on God when it comes to the numbers, is to reflect on what His Word says. We know that it is God who gives us the ability to gain wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18) and that He desires for us to prosper (3 John 1:2).

The way to achieve financial dominion and prosperity is by allowing God to serve as the ultimate Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of your life and business and by following His spiritual economics. God’s spiritual economics are sometimes referred to as “kingdom economics.”

It’s been said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. This one is no different. However, I believe we can contrast business and investing activities that function in two different paradigms: the kingdom of the world versus the kingdom of God.

I believe God gives us the pen and the book to write our story in. So, what story are you writing for yourself? Are you becoming a good and faithful servant?

Whether or not we realize it, we use the principle of leverage on a daily basis, not simply in physics but in the sense of turning limited resources into an advantage. We can do so selfishly or with a focus on eternal things.

How do we personally and corporately carry those ancient words “on earth as it is in heaven” as the Church today? And for us in the investment industry, how do we carry those ancient words in our daily work?

Faith-driven stewards, entrepreneurs, and leaders are an integral and critical part of how God will be able to work in the lives of people who live in Tomorrow’s World. I submit that we must fight this battle with leadership and intentional living.

Technology has always had the potential of advancing human flourishing, or promoting wicked agendas. Technology’s effects depend crucially on the heart and capabilities behind the people wielding it. The rapid proliferation of web3 technologies – fungible tokens (“crypto”), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse – is no exception.

Community development investing is one way that faith-based investors can use their investments to make a real impact on the communities where they live and work.

My brother recently passed away, and his funeral gave me new insight into his life. I realized this truth: Each of our lives is reflected in the people we interact with here on earth and have left behind.

We propose to define success as investors as taking risk skillfully on behalf of the vulnerable, in ways that bring good news to the poor, release captives, give sight to the blind, and set the oppressed free.

For decades, home prices have been outpacing household incomes, and we are now seeing a whole generation being locked out of the promise of homeownership.

How do you measure giving success? What is considered a tithe? Can I direct my giving resources toward Christian-led businesses? Is that stewardship?

Like it or not, if we want to be salt and light in our world, we cannot abandon mainstream media. Simply put, people of faith must invest more aggressively in the power of storytelling.

I believe the ESG philosophy is inherently flawed and insufficient to produce the holistic and enduring flourishing we desire to see in our organizations and in our world. Impact investing, while not perfect, possesses a greater ability to promote holistic prosperity without the risks associated with ESG investing.

Are we committed to the restoration and flourishing of cities for God’s Kingdom and for His glory (Isaiah 61)? Will we make sacrifices? Are we prepared to obey the Lord’s call?

As we can read in Ecclesiastes, nothing is new under the sun. History will repeat itself because mankind will never fundamentally change. But we can take comfort in the fact that God never changes, and what He has done in the past, He can do again—if we are only willing to submit our lives to His perfect will.

Since Christ is our Lord and ultimate treasure, overlooking him in our investing ethics is a problem that should be confronted pastorally and theologically. What would happen if we held up the supremacy of Christ as the foundation for a truly Christian ethic for investing?

Each year, I take the opportunity to review the environmental developments of the past year and evaluate the obstacles and progress we’ve seen.