As Christians, we seek to make God the center of our lives and the catalyst for every decision we make. The way we parent, lead, serve, and spend. What if we could align all our investments with God’s heart? And in the process, we can have a positive impact on the world.
Since God owns everything, the caretaking of capital isn’t our responsibility alone. And what a relief to know that money is placed into our hands simply to steward, for His glory and for the flourishing of the world. God owns it all and He cares deeply about the how, where, and why behind our investment strategies.
What is a Faith Driven Investor? It can mean different things to different people, and what follows is not meant to be a definitive list. Yet, in our experience, we have found some common attributes, or as we call them here, marks.
A Faith Driven Investor is...
A relationship with Jesus Christ and an identity that flows from who He is and what He has done for us changes everything. It radically transforms the way we work, the way we invest, the way we view money, all of it. Faith Driven Investors live a life transformed by the Gospel.
Faith Driven Investors are people who operate in close proximity to money, and thus within earshot of the whisperings and power of Mammon. We do so with the goal of taking back territory from the false promises of fungible, storable, accountable power.
We begin with the understanding that the Earth is the Lord’s, the fullness therein and everything in it belongs to him. That includes us. We are a part of his creation, all of which belongs to him. In the beginning, God spoke the world and us into creation. He continues to speak to us through Scripture. And that is where we need to begin.
Influence is in the hands of the investor. That’s because capital can create growth, change, and opportunity. Those who own the capital also possess the ability to influence not just their individual companies and clients, but the broader financial market as well. The question is, “How will we use this power?”
Our convictions are derived from our Christian faith, which is inextricably linked to an understanding of what it means to love God and love our neighbor—the two greatest commandments that God lays out for us. As we collectively and individually go through this discernment process, we must have an abundance of grace with each other, even as we sharpen one another’s thinking.
God gives us the chance to work alongside Him, to cultivate on His behalf. God wants us to join Him in starting, sharing, completing, and investing in new projects, ideas, and businesses. This has been true since the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam to tend to the plants and name the animals. There’s the possibility of a shared vision between God and His people.
Our faith in God supersedes our fear of losing money or receiving lower returns. We know from the Bible that Jesus invites us to meet Him where He is. And time after time in Scripture, we find Him with the weak, the destitute, and the lonely. Faith Driven Investors know that if we don't meet Jesus where he is at, we may miss him entirely.
Therefore, Faith Driven Investors...
Since God owns everything, the caretaking of his capital isn’t our responsibility alone. And what a relief to know that money is placed into our hands simply to steward, for his glory and for the flourishing of the world. God owns it all and he cares deeply about the how, where, and why behind our investment strategies.
How does a Faith Driven Investor follow through? This kind of tangible impact can be demonstrated in different ways, and what follows is not meant to be a definitive list. Yet, in our experience, we have identified some common principles that we can employ.
God cares about people and places. Throughout Scripture, he is consistently telling people to travel to certain locations and meet with specific groups and individuals. Jesus’ last words to his followers include a list of cities and a call to reconcile broken relationships.
If we all believe that we are going to one day give an accounting to God for the way we’ve spent our lives on earth, it’s hard to imagine that God is going to ask us what we did to hedge against inflation. He’s going to ask us how we loved and served the people he brought into our lives.
How would you get started as a Faith Driven Investor if God called you to invest hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, in Kingdom-building ventures? How would you separate the many seeking capital from the few in which you would want to invest? It’s impossible to make these investment decisions alone.
Investing internationally requires an intense amount of hours. It means having boots on the ground in the places where you’re directing capital as you spend time with people in person. Few things are more effective than going to the place where a person lives and seeing what he or she does on a daily basis.
Entrepreneurs are building products or services to serve their customers. Investors ultimately want a return on their investment. When our relationships are based on the value of the transaction, it is likely at some point that the entrepreneur and investor will be driven by different goals from that transaction.
We truly believe that it’s all God’s anyway. And that means we as Faith Driven Investors can stop dividing where we allocate capital and start multiplying the impact we have on the marketplace and the world.
The Parable of the Talents is a regularly discussed passage for Faith Driven Investors. One simple thought we see from this story: action isn’t optional. Some of the servants in the parable of the talents did what they were supposed to do. They knew the master was coming back, so they worked hard to give him a large dividend upon his return.