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The Capital Stewards emerges from a three-year research collaboration at The Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, England. Each month, our group has met to wrestle with the questions where Christian worldview, capital, and stewardship collide — and now we’re inviting you into the conversation. See more at capitalstewards.co.
Brandon Giella of Snapmarket.co is joined by Erik Averill of AWM, The Athlete Family Office, Ben Nicka of Oxford University, and Matt Galyon, an independent consultant, among others. The group is advised by theologian Craig Bartholomew.
This is not another faith-and-finance show. It’s a working conversation among practitioners and scholars who have spent years asking what it actually means to steward capital under God’s economy — and where the dominant assumptions of optimization, return, and productivity break down against the biblical story.
Every episode begins with a single question. We think out loud, draw on Scripture, and invite you in.
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Introduction
Welcome to the very first episode of the Capital Stewards podcast. Now, we're called the Capital Stewards because we are a research hub out of a research institution in Cambridge, England, which is called the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. And we have been meeting over the last three years, pretty much every month, talking about essentially faith and finance, God and money.
What does the Christian worldview have to say about capital stewardship? And this has opened up, of course, many, many conversations and many questions about all kinds of things. And so we as a group are gonna take up some of these questions that we've been discussing. And so every episode, we're gonna lead with a question and try to talk about it.
And so we are inviting you into this discussion that we've been having for several years, and we're excited to get started. My name is Brandon Giella, and I am met with Matt Galleon, Eric Averill, and Ben Nica. And there are several others in this group, and we also are advised by a wonderful theologian in Craig Bartholomew, teaching us about worldview and how to assess some of these questions.
So let's start with our very first question, which is: What does God value as a good return on investment? And the reason we're gonna start with this question is because a lot of the other implications about capital stewardship and even our very lives depend on what is the worldview that we live in and what is God's worldview as it relates to money.
And often these questions are driven by, well, how much return am I getting on this investment? So for example, you know, you get nine percent returns over the last forty years on the S&P 500. Is that good? Is that bad? Is that the way God would value our money? Is it the way that God would value our retirement, our bodies, the way we optimize our lives, our portfolios?
What is a good asset class to invest in? What is not? Do we even need to be thinking about these things? Should we just give all our money away? Lots of questions here. So it also, as I mentioned, addresses what do we do with our lives and how we approach money and our body and so many things. And so I wanna start with Eric.
I wanna start with: How do we think about what is a return on investment? But more than that, what is productivity? What is our life for, our money for? And so I know you address these questions many times with your clients and the way that you, um, think about things with your firm. So I'll start with you.
What does, what does that mean to you?
What Is Productivity & ROI?
📍 📍 It's, uh, it's a loaded question. It's a, it's a question that I wrestle through on a daily basis for myself and Sadie and our family. But as you mentioned, for the context of the listeners, um, I run AWM, the Athlete Family Office. So we're a multifamily office that, uh, serves professional athlete families.
So when there is this word around optimization or performance, um, we are, I would say, at the center of that. Of, uh, even socially and culturally, the question everybody assumes an athlete is asking is, you know, how do they become better at their craft? How do they play longer at their craft? And so, you know, this language even of how they invest their time, um, and resources are always tied back to how do they make themselves more productive.
Because by definition, the way that they generate, uh, income and wins for an organization is by to produce. And if you don't produce, um, you are-- you're cut, you're released, you're fired. And so the way every athlete is formed and shaped, which is the culture I come from as a former professional baseball player.
So since, you know, I would say it probably started at thir- 12, 13 years old, uh, every day I thought about how do I become better than who I am today? Um, and, you know- Diverting that into, I guess, uh, the conversation of what my role is in a lot of their lives and, and my own family's life is going, how do we steward or how do we use this money well that has been a byproduct of, of our craft as athletes?
And, know, I think one of the things I've spent a lot of time on is analyzing is understanding that, uh, I don't just take off my lens of production and optimization and then become a wholly different person when I'm thinking about what it means to steward money. What I've really wrestled with is going, way I am is all about optimization and all about productivity. Um, and so really this challenge, uh, shows up first and foremost before I can even answer what is a good return, there was a nuance in there is, uh, the other way is I've been shaped as an athlete is everything is individualized, right down to the blood work that I do gives me my individual, you know, uh, nutrition.
It gives me my individual supplements, how I-- it, it, it informs where I'm gonna live, it informs where I'm gonna train, and everything is custom built to me. And so naturally, when I come into the financial conversation, I am the starting point, is what do I want to optimize? What does it serve myself? How does it serve my family? really the conversation I think we're gonna get into is the challenges as the people of God, um, we are not our own. And I think it, it is not a new revelation to the listeners on this podcast that we've all heard it, that God owns it all, and it's his money, but we don't functionally live that way in a society where it's all individualization and all optimization and productivity.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
before 📍 📍 we started recording, you had a, a interesting claim that that's quite counter-cultural to the way that the church has lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. Can you recap that? I'm so fascinated by that topic.
📍 📍 I'm sure I can. I, I... You know, the idea that I am the starting point is, is really, really foreign to the way that the Bible approaches life, and I've been looking at these two verses this week. Um, Matthew 5:48 when he says, um, "Be perfect for, for your Heavenly Father is perfect." the translation that, um, Matt's pastor gives to that is, you know, "Be whole. Have integrity as a person because that's what your Heavenly Father is like." And it echoes the, the Old Testament, which is, um, "Be holy for I am holy." And it actually, like, it takes the whole point of human life and orients it, it outward. says that you exist primarily in relationship, that your primary relationship is with God.
And then when Jesus comes down and says, you know, "Love God and love your neighbor," you know, kind of summarize the whole purpose of the human life, um, it, it ma- like radically de-centers this idea that I'm the starting point. And I really like how you put that, Eric, that, you know, when you, when you go into a workplace or when you're an athlete and you're honing your craft, I think there, a, there's even a perversion inside of athleticism, that you're not really loving the game as much. You're really looking at the game through the lens of self kind of pervasively. And I think that that kind of... That perverts when you play a... When you play baseball and you're primarily thinking about yourself and not about the game, I think that, um, that's not really joyful. I think that anybody who's been an athlete, the moments that you really enjoy that game is when you're fully pulled in and you lose yourself because you're giving yourself to that, that activity. And, um, and those are the moments when, you know, when you've got these occasions of self-forgetfulness, that it actually becomes something beautiful to
Hmm.
Uh, you lose track of time. Um, you get in that kind of that flow state that optimization people use so much, right? But they can't actually get at that because there's, they're, they're even turning the flow state, this, like, experience of aesthetic beauty and passion, they're turning that back onto the self.
That isn't that... That's gonna be how you're gonna self-optimize if you can trick yourself into that state.
Hmm
think that that's a massive perversion of what we're called to be. Is this drawn out into other people? And if you take that into an investment, I mean, that is just a, a, a massive twist on what the purpose of investment
Hmm
I'll just give you one example and I'll, I'll stop. But I think about... I've been talking to a lot of people who sit on, uh, who serve institutional investors who are Christian, you know, Christian institution, and they're, they're talking to the investment board of the institution. And if you challenge the institution to say like, "What's the real purpose of investing as a Christian?" Um, you know, what if your calling was to support good work first and foremost, and not to generate, you know, not to be primarily concerned with the returns you're generating vis-à-vis a benchmark Or even the absolute returns that you're generating vis-a-vis an organization's goals for the financial future. Um, and I think that those boards, um, are so obsessed with optimization and with these kind of performance goals, they want to kind of measure up vis-a-vis other organizations that are running their endowments. they want to measure up against these financial goals that they've set. So they're kind of, they start with the organization's perspective on the world and what the organization wants to do. maybe the money is supporting that organization's work, but a lot of times I think the two get completely disconnected because they start to say no to what investing might be about, what they might be drawn into and invited into in the world, um, because they're so focused on this optimization metric of we need to generate the 7% returns because of such and such promise that we've made. Um, so I think that that's how I see these kind of things connecting, that you, that kind of focus on the self, this focus on optimization other things out of the view entirely so you can't even really have that conversation.
I, I wanna follow that up and then I, I want M-Matt and Eric to, to jump in after this. But, um, you know, one of the fundamental questions we've been asking is like, is there a... Is it the culture since the Enlightenment that has been focused on creating the human as a machine, that we are this atomistic structure that we can optimize?
And so because of that, we have w-what we've talked about, like financialization in capital markets, where everything gets whittled down into a formula, you know, it, whether it's the CAPM or the Black-Scholes model or whatever the mathematical formulation is, and then there's high-frequency trading and so on and so on.
Um,
The Enlightenment & Financialization
is it because we have the Enlightenment culture that's affecting our current culture that then develops these models, and then now capital markets are just the models? Or is it, or is something else going on there? Is it that math itself is mathematical or, or, or finance itself is mathematical, and so therefore, we've created models to better understand it?
Like, I'm trying to understand that relationship a little bit better, and I, I wonder if you could talk a little bit, Ben, about financialization as you, as you see it, and you've been commenting on it over the years.
Yeah, that's gonna play a big part of it. I think when you, when you sit down, um, as an athlete, uh, d- that idea of blood work, Eric, is really illuminating. If you sit down and the first thing that you're talking about when you're talking with your doctor or your performance coach is looking at the blood work, um, then you're gonna start to optimize the blood work.
You're gonna think about what you need to put inside your body to get the blood work better. Or, you know, you're gonna say like, "I've been producing this much lactic acid during this event. I'm gonna try to optimize that." the, the very, like, data that you're looking at is gonna then shape the path that you're taking.
Mm-hmm.
And, and I think it's really helpful that, um, you know, we-- when dual entry accounting comes along or when financial models come along because we've invented the math in order to do present value calculations, um, that really helps us to see what's going on. It helps us to manage that space, just like a blood test helps you to understand what's happening in your body. you can't lose sight of the bigger picture of what's happening with that, with that mission. And I think when you, when you get pulled into the financial model, like this institution gets pulled into cash flow, uh, for the pension plan and for the operating, you know, cost of the institution, that's gonna get them to focus on one thing, but then their eyes just won't be lifted up and then drawn out to look at the other things. And I think it's very similar to the kind of blood test. So, you know, what you choose to look at, um, is going to dictate quite a bit of, of the kind of conversation you're gonna have about any given thing. But particularly with investing, um, because you-- we primarily encounter securities, through prices, you know, um, and stories, you know, about the companies.
But that, that price is gonna be predominant because that's what gets fed into our model. You know, what price can you enter at? What price can you exit at? Uh, what happens in
Mm-hmm.
📍 📍 Yeah, the only thing I'll add to that is at, go back to your point, Brandon, as all of these were happening, when you get into the Industrial Revolution, there was a lot of philosophical, uh, changes that were happening at that time too. So these things were, were coupled together in which you had more of a, uh, embracing of rationalism as this kind of process that we apply to these different segmented disciplines across life. And really the sacred order, the religious realm, was separated from the scientific realm. And so th- these ideas were coming up around the same time, uh, I think we, we are far downstream of that as, as those, um, became segmented disciplines that we saw within life. This is the realm of math or science, and that is the tool that we use to understand this realm and to discern meaning and purpose in this realm. then you had this, uh, this bifurcation or this splitting from a holistic view of life and meaning and purpose, um, that, you know, I think is at odds with the Christian view that, that sees all of life as that which is created by and destined for God's purposes and his glory, every domain and realm of life has to be seen and interpreted through this biblical lens and worldview through the, through the biblical story. Um, so we, we lost our moorings, our connectedness this larger narrative, these larger questions about identity and purpose for humanity and for creation in God's world. So I, I think that was probably part of it, is there's a lot of stuff happening at the same time alongside these innovations, um, in the sciences and in industry that was happening.
You also had a lot of philosophical, uh, developments and changes. Um, and we're, and we're downstream of that, I, I think.
Hmm. Well, uh, okay, so
What Is a Good Return on Investment?
to turn it back on the, the original question on what is a good return on investment from God's point of view, if you will. Like, surely we are called to be ca- good stewards. You know, this is the Capital Stewards podcast. We are, we are meant to be wise and thoughtful and discerning about what we're doing.
So maybe the question is like, is it, is 9% a good return or is 9.1%? That's not it. But, like, surely, like, we do have to save for a rainy day. I do have to save for retirement. That's wise. That's, like, being a good steward. I shouldn't waste my capital. Or Eric, in your context, like, for your athletes, in order for them to be top 1% in their class, they have to focus on their HRV or their BMI or whatever.
Like, that is how they are being a good steward with the gifts God has given them. So how do we reconcile those things as investors or as, or as athletes even?
Yeah. One, one thing that, um, I'm sure, I'm sure the listeners and you guys, uh, over the episodes are gonna be like, "Enough with the athlete analogies," but it is
At least for this first one, at least.
it is just how my brain works. Um, it's how I've been formed and shaped my entire life. Um, is the one thing I love about the, about sports though is it's very clear on what winning is, right?
Any given sport I know at the conclusion of when that clock ends, the team with more points wins, and we have such clarity on what success is. Uh, you could, uh, change that language to the definition of what does it mean, like, what is good for my team is to win, right? So when we ask about this question of what is a good investment, I think about positionally whose team is it?
Because that's gonna define what good is. And, know, going back to my individual, uh, athlete analogy, I mean, Ben, what, what you articulated about when the athlete loses himself, it's the time of enjoyment and fulfillment is literally... I have the privilege to close to the best in the world, not just athletes, like literally the ones winning all the awards, the majority of them do not wake up and enjoy their sport, right?
But every playoff season something happens, right? When they... when for a moment, for a few weeks, for a day, you know, uh, you watch, you watch grown men who are making millions of dollars turn back into the youthful kids that
Hmm
just there enjoying the game, and they're not thinking about their blood work.
They're not thinking about their mechanics. They're not, they're not thinking about themselves. so I think when we go back to answering what is a good investment, if I don't stop to actually realize I lived my entire life socialized and told that it's about me and my definition of success, that's gonna be a very different thing than if my experience when I was drafted by the T- uh, Detroit Tigers, like I became a member of their team and it was my job as their employee, right?
To, to achieve their end goal of success. Whereas being, you know, a child of God, a member of God's household, we have to define how does God define what is a good investment. Because His definition of what both Ben and Matt summed up, it is first and foremost to glorify God and be, uh, we've been blessed to be a blessing, right?
To be a mediator that loves our neighbor well and loves our, our world well. where we've gotta spend time
Hmm.
we can go to, you know, is an index fund, uh, good or not? Is, you know, private markets good or not? I think it's really us getting that definition of whose team are we on and what is, what is God's definition
Hmm.
Yeah, and I'd even go back, the, the team thing, that a lot too. Um, a slight problem I have with that, is the, the team I think still I don't know. I get worried when I think about making contributions to a team that you're still at some s- some sense, like earning your spot on the
Hmm
And, you know, you're kind of, you know, like you're not really in the team unless you're optimizing your performance.
Yeah
And, um, and I... But I, I really like...
So I'm, I'm a little anxious on that front, but I really like what you're saying about what, what's good. think when a team gets to define the good, you know, the good outcome, it's actually really powerful. I go back to, I think that good return on investment as a Christian has to start with does it mean to be a good human? What's the good in a human life? investing is ultimately a human activity. It can't be... It's not an abstract thing. it's, it's a human activity first, and so it can't be at odds with what it means to be a good human. And I think that's a really critical point for us to start. It helps us kind of a- answer questions about how do you make provision? Um, where do you invest? What does it look like to make wise decisions? You know, what's wisdom? It's still gonna come down to what it is to be human. So when Jesus is asked, you know, "Good teacher, what must I do to eternal life?" he immediately says like, "Why do you call me good? No one's good except for God alone." Um, Jesus hears this idea of what the good is, and he wants to radically redirect us to say the human good is always going to be, drawing us up in to being in the image of God. It's the weirdest, kind of biggest compliment in the whole scripture is that when it says, "Be holy for I am holy." think about what that means.
Like if you met... If I met, um, LeBron James he said, "You know, I'm gonna try to teach you how to play basketball, but my number one word to you, Ben, is, um, I want you to play like I play," we would all think that that's utterly ridiculous. one, I'm short, I'm not an athlete, I, I suck at basketball, and you would just say like, "That's the worst advice we've ever heard." But that's what God does when he says to humans, um, holy for I'm holy," or be whole and complete because that's what your heavenly Father is. Which, which, you know, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. It's a ridiculous compliment, but it's saying our good is being drawn up into that. And then you ask what's a good human activity? And that starts to get you asking different questions about what's a good investment. it has to be a good human action first. I don't know if that resonates with, with how you guys have been thinking about, you know, ethics and investment, just been sitting on my, my mind quite a bit. I'd love to hear what you
Yeah, let's take the next few minutes and try to resolve 5,000 years of philosophy on what is the good life. Ready? Go.
Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I don't know. What do, what do you guys think?
Matt's got the most amount of books in his background, so he has to answer the question
that's right
Well, I, I mean, I think what, um, what Ben's doing there is, and I think this is w- how all of us came to be involved in this particular group, is that, um, we're operating in the industry or have interest in the finance industry. We have all felt kind of intuitively, that something's off and something's not right, and so we're trying to faithfully analyze the realm and the domain that we find ourselves in, um, from a Christian life view, right?
From a biblical view of what the good life is. And so we need to start these terms and these questions and these goals, uh, that we use within the field, within the biblical story. We need to go back and ask fundamental kind of first order principle questions around issues like return and profit and money and business and work and wealth, and all the variables that come into scripture that are related to that, like greed, um, for example, as well. uh, you know, so that's, you know, that's, you know, the, the way that I got into this group was working with a Christian investment firm that was trying to answer these questions about how do we think about investing from a biblical perspective. so you, it leads you to ask different sorts of questions, um, around the goals and the telos the end that we talk about when we talk about money and capital stewardship and investing. So even this question about return, what is a good return? You know, Ben pressed in on the question good. I would press in on the question return. Like,
Hmm
what are we talking about? What is a return?
Hmm
we see that within the biblical story? and I think when you start to ask those sorts of questions, you get into developing and trying to look for what is a biblical understanding of abundance, of profit, of excess. Where is that nature within the biblical story? Because when we're seeking that out, oftentimes for individual Christians that are coming to the question of investing, it's around, for the majority of Christians, it's around the idea of retirement. so they're, they're looking for how to manage excess money that they have right now in a way that's prudent and that saves and that's able to care for their family in latter years when the type of work they, they are doing has to change. Um, so, so that's how I get into asking and thinking about the question, and I think there's a lot that you can say there. I think that's where you go back and look to the Biblical narrative and say, what does... why do we have such a thing like work turns off additional money for us? Like work produces abundance and profit. Why is that the case? You go back to Genesis and you look at how God created the world, and God created a world of abundance and fruitfulness, and, um, and that is to serve a purpose. And you find those, uh... You know, I won't get into the full kind of teaching here, but you find that purpose in the beginning chapters of Genesis, what we're to do with this abundance that God has given us, how we are to steward it, to rule over God's creation as his image-bearers and for his glory. And that starts you off on a whole different way of thinking about profit and abundance and return when you ground it within the Biblical narrative. Um, and it, and it gets you away from just purely thinking about it as, uh, kind of a
Hmm.
or a monetary value to hit, because we see return as a stewardship of the abundance within God's good creation that
Hmm
are to therefore utilize and give back to His glory and for the good of Him and for the good of His creation.
Hmm.
So, uh,
I
yeah
really famous Catholic investor, Peter Lynch. And, um, Peter Lynch at the end of every day could keep score of whether he'd won that day or not, whether he had a good return. And the way was he would calculate if the returns on his fund vis-a-vis the market and see who won. it, it kind of had this, you know, end of the game, the clock, you know, the whistle blows, the market's closed, you know who won that day. And, um, and I like that you start with fruitfulness, but I wonder too, like, um, look at the Apostle Paul's life or Mother Teresa's life. Um, look at the people in your life that when they die, you look back and say like, "There was a life well-lived. It generated a good return." You know, they had certain gifts and possibilities in their lives.
They did fruitful work. Um, what kind of return did they generate? What kind of fruitfulness was born in their life? Because the fruitfulness that's kicked off in Genesis 1 does have an economic aspect, but it's also this holistic fruitfulness. I think it's really important to, to de-center trying to justify economic returns out of the Genesis story and say that there's a, there's a bigger thing.
And, uh, Eric, you talk about that 'cause you're looking at families and, you know, um, this idea of the 100-year family. How do you think about drawing people out into this bigger concept of, of what they're going for? I don't... Sometimes I think about it through the lens of Brooks', you know, um, resume values versus the eulogy
Hmm
But, you know, how do you draw people out into this bigger sense of return?
Yeah, I, I mean, it's, I, uh, I live in this question every single day. And it's funny, I was-- what I was thinking about, Matt, as, as you were talking about Genesis 1 and 2 is, um, for the listeners, I, I had the privilege of, uh, essentially being in a, a seminary for four years, uh, uh, in the living room of a gentleman named, uh, Michael Goheen. And, uh, one of our professors that flew in one day was Al Walters, who wrote this book called Creation Regained. And, uh, I remember the first couple classes, we came in, you know, with all these big questions we wanted Goheen to answer. And, uh, just like, you know, the old wise grandfather, just like kind of patiently patted us on, on the back and, and, uh, said like like, "Hold your questions."
Um, and it was really, uh, having this full understanding of if I didn't have a great understanding of creation, I was gonna have a very broken, uh, system to be able to answer all these big questions I had.
Mm-hmm.
that just reminded me of like, why were we created and what, what is the goodness of this world, um, challenges the way that I try to help families.
So The thing that I'm always talking about is order of operation. We define a hundred-year family as a multi-generational, wealthy, flourishing family. But then when we start to deconstruct what does that mean where we start with it's about flourishing. The purpose the vehicle of family, you have to ask, "What is the mission of the family?"
The intent is that we are trustees of our last name, and why the hundred years matters is, is it gives us a good benchmark to get outside of ourselves to say, "We're not gonna be a hundred years. We're not gonna be around. So what is this mean? What does it mean to be What do I wanna carry forward?" And that the wealthy part is is a funding for the mission. You know, wealth is important, but it's always attached to serving the purpose of the mission and the flourishing of the family. And so if we answer the question, there's a great Harvard, uh, research center trying to ask the question: What is human flourishing? And they've come up with six dimensions of what they think human flourishing is. One of the dimensions is resources, but there are five other that are completely neglected.
Mm-hmm.
so when we're talking with families, it's actually doing this exact conversation that says, "Let's not reduce your family down to a financial bank account. Um, you are not your net worth. You are not your financial returns." And those are actually tools. They are subsets to drive human flourishing, and so that's a large part of the conversation. Now, what I would tell you, that all sounds great, but then when you start to talk to them about portfolios, it's, uh, "Hey, I wanna get into private real estate," or, "I wanna get into venture," because you can make multi-generational wealth, right?
And so Instagram is actually my competing forming and shaping of what multi-generational wealth is because it's being reduced down to the next deal, and my challenge for myself and our clients every day is: How do we actually become the hundred-year family? So when I look at this early stage in, uh, investment, I can think about one right now we have in due diligence and, you know, my, my investment analysts are telling me an opportunity cost, this is a pure pass, there is a lot that can be, uh, wrestled with of this company should exist in the world.
Hmm
Hmm.
what do we do with that? Because, yeah, our spreadsheet says that we should pass on it, but the wrestling of I think this company should exist a current conversation going on, and what do you, what do you do with that?
I,
Anxiety, Trust & God's Provision
I wonder if something that, that gets at the heart of it, something that I'm, I'm wrestling with in my season right now that I think is somewhat related is like, what is the relationship... Like Matt, you were talking about creation. What is the relationship between God's provision and our trust in Him alone, and trusting that, for example, like this thing should exist.
R- The returns be what they may later, and I'll trust God for that. Because I, I think in a lot of, at least in my life now, I'm 35, I have a three-year-old, I have a one-year-old, there is so much that is so far outside of my control. And when I think about money, it's not what do I do with this excess, you know, capital that I have in retirement.
It's like, can I trust God that He will continue my business? Can I trust God that He will pay my mortgage, that He will provide for me? And, and wrestling with like fear and anxiety around money rather than like the return portfolio. And so I'm just trying to think like, how do I live the good life trusting that God will, like He has done all through Scripture, providing for people that have nothing.
You know, somebody out in the desert that's surviving off of a couple of jars of oil or manna or whatever that might look like. And I just think about so much of our, our investment decisions are almost like related to fear and anxiety around God's provision. Um, but then, but then you have these opportunities like, like kind of Eric, what you're talking about is like, do we take this on even though maybe it's not as good on returns, but it should, it should exist.
We should do that anyway, and I trust that God will provide whatever it needs to, to happen to make that happen
It's interesting to start with anxiety on that one and trusting in God. You know, when you go to Jesus' teaching on anxiety in both Luke and in Matthew follow teachings on money
Yeah
And so he's always connecting, you know, anxiety to issues about money because, you know, what are you, what are you gonna eat?
What are you gonna
Mm-hmm.
gonna live, et cetera. and, and I think he sees that lack of trust in those moments is gonna anxiety, and then that anxiety misleads, um, in terms of the decisions you should
Hmm
And fascinating because he, he directly connects that to greed, which is a pretty brutal thing to say in that moment. Um, but I think Jesus greed as pulled out of loving your neighbor and loving God.
Mm.
You know, if you look at the, the, the rich fool in, in Luke, I think it's chapter 12, everybody knows the story of the rich fool 'cause Jesus says, you know, "Beware of greed," and then he tells the story of the rich fool.
The rich fool's, he's super loaded, but he's had a really killer year, and he's wondering what to do with his big returns, and he's anxious about the future because he doesn't know what to do with all of his money. And then he makes the decision that I should just keep it for myself, and he dies that night and gets the final verdict, which is fool. know, um, then Jesus doesn't stop with the rich person's greed that blinds them to what they should really do with their money. He goes right to the everyday person and starts talking about the rich man's not anxious about food and what he should wear and where he should live, but generally all the rest of the audience that was listening that day were. And then that's when God, or when Jesus brings it down to this line, you know, you can't serve both God and money. And so when, when you're anxious about money, you can't trust God. when you can't trust God, it means that you're gonna be trusting money. And once you start trusting money, then your treasure is where your heart is, and your affections will draw you towards, towards doing the thing that serves money and away from the thing that serves love of God and love of neighbor. And it's such a direct connection that the analyst that you're talking to, Eric, they'd know what the spreadsheet's telling them, um, but they, but they don't... almost gonna blind them or make them deaf. You know, Jesus says, "If you have ears to see, you know, ears to hear, listen and do it." thing with the seeing kind of metaphors.
But if you're blinded, the light inside of you is darkness, how great is the
Hmm
And I think that those kind of moments are you're only seeing the numbers, and that's basically not letting the light in. You can't see where your vocation is in that moment to do what I think your conscience is telling you in that moment, which is, is a really good thing.
I can..." In that moment, I think what you're doing is you're actually seeing value in the world, what's truly
Hmm
and then you're being drawn to support the good thing that has value. But if, but if you're taught, as we are all taught in business school, that value is- purely a financial, uh, construct, then you'll miss the real value that's in front of your face
So maybe it's adding to the due diligence process, is this loving God and loving my neighbor? Because then maybe God will take care of the returns.
Well, I, I think there's, um, um, Finny Kuruvilla, who's CIO at Eventide, he has, uh, this point where he'll talk about Wall Street has this concept of total return, right? And so total return in Wall Street terms is the price return plus the dividend return, right? So this particular fund had price appreciation of 10% last year.
The dividend return was 1%. The total return was 11%. In God's economy, we should have a different concept for return, and again, this is specifically thinking about the investing portion of it. So we should see total return in God's economy as the financial return, but also the impact return, that investment is doing in the world, how it is serving God and loving neighbor. the, the equation and the math is different. I think there's a different way that's a helpful way to think about how we seek to quantify the purpose and the impact and the value of investments that we make. It's, it's looking at different things, not just the numbers, but also the, the impact that that investment makes in the world more broadly.
It's like when people say like the triple bottom line, you know? It's like if the financial return is negative, that's philanthropy 'cause the impact is high. But if it's positive, it's investing. But it's almost like are those-- should those be considered differently? You know?
Yeah. There is one thing I wanted to come back to earlier, 'cause I think Ben was good to point this out. You know, when I was talking about fruitfulness and abundance and s- rooting that in the Genesis narrative, um, I, yeah, I wanna reframe the whole conversation so we're still not critiquing that within an economic conversation, where we're only thinking about fruitfulness as in, like, material gross product that, that can go into a calculation of productivity for a country or a nation or whatnot. This idea and abundance, it's a, it's a Christian life, uh, narrative and language that's used, right? When we're... When Jesus talks about what life to the fullness looks like, He uses this analogy of the vine and the branches, right? "I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and you will produce much fruit." When Paul talks about what the out- you know, the outworkings of the Spirit of God looks like in the life of the believer, he uses this fruit analogy in the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness. even when we critique these things sometimes, I think we think within the model.
We, we think that we're talking about... And we need to reframe these whole conversation into first-principle thinking about, does it look like for us to produce and to be fruitful in God's world, through our financial capital that we have, but also all of our lives, how all of our lives reflects the goodness of God working out through us through the power of His Spirit, so that we testify to His Kingdom by what we produce. And then that produce, that product, that fruitfulness lives, that is what is the leaven that... Uh, kind of mixing metaphors here. That is the leaven of the Kingdom of God, right? That is the saltiness. That is what causes the Kingdom to have His distinct flavor in the world, is because all of our lives are lived off of reliance on and abundance in God.
And because of that, uh, we have this abundance that flows out of our lives, and that abundance, that return to our work and our efforts, be it in our families' lives, in our communities' lives, or our financial lives, all of that is a, a testimony to God's provision and His goodness, and defined on His terms within His Scripture, a- and not according to kinda these competing cultural narratives that have been segmented to, like, different parts of our lives.
Mm.
Yeah, that, that, that, that's a great corrective, um, Matt. I think that the sensitivity there is so many times in conservative Christian circles, um, that those Genesis texts are used to justify modern economic frames. it's a really good qualification that you just set out there to say, certainly that includes in our work. You know, if you plant seeds in the ground, the normal, uh, normal result is that you're gonna get a lot more than just the one seed back. You're gonna get, you know, enough to plant next year's harvest, and to feed, and to sell. the goal when you, when you plant a seed, and that's the way that creation is set up.
So fruitfulness in work is something we expect. But I think a lot of times, kind of narratives are just used to justify the status quo. And I think maybe we've... You know, as we're working towards the end here, one of the things that fascinates me is the use of the word Christian in our conversation is gonna be always problematized in this sense, that I think the Christian view, especially for the four of us who are sitting in America, the Christian view on investing, generally speaking, is really hard to differentiate from the view of investing of the whole
Mm-hmm.
of the United States. And I think when we're using the term Christian, I think we're using it in an aspirational sense, and I think that's okay. I also think it's really important to say that, the Christian population in general, if you just took, you know... Let's say there's, uh, 50 million Christians in the United States, do the, do the, do the 50 million Christians in the United States, know, that, that go to church every Sunday and, and, and confess the Apostles' Creed, even the Nicene Creed, um, are they the people who make an...
like, make more moral investment decisions than the general populace? And I think that the answer almost has to be no, that's not the case. That actually ethical investing is more popular among people who are not in the church. Um, and it generally gets more attention from people who are not in the church. that's, that's not to say I don't wanna talk about theology and what the Bible has to say about investing. I think it's important to say that, um, if we own up to what's in the moment, Christian investing, if you're using it in a sociological term, will be a pretty generic picture that looks like everything else that's going on in the investment world.
It's gonna more or less look like Peter Lynch's Magellan fund. Um, but the aspiration for a better Christian investing, we're calling the church first and then everybody, um, back to a, a different kind of vision, we can also call that Christian, but it's, it's certainly not reflective of what's happening in the, in the United States
One, one of the things that I, I love that. One of, uh One of the tools that I use in my own life and within our family is we talk a lot about position and role. And so even when I'm articulating what does it mean to be an Averill or what does it mean to be the people of God, not, um, you know, not that we never use the word Christian, like we, we do, but I remind myself a lot of, you know, like we are God's people, and we are mediators of his blessing, right?
We are a royal priesthood. We are a holy nation. And so even when I think a lot of times when we're talking about statements, helpful mechanism is, is as the people of God, how were we called to do these things? Um, because what we know about so many words, they're infused with so much meaning it's almost like every single statement we make, it's like, okay, let's pause, let's
Yeah
the disclosures, and we've gotta, we've gotta do that on every single word. Whereas a really even just a helpful challenge is, is like, what does it mean to be the people of God? Okay, my role of what scripture tells me is, you know, I'm a member of his household, I just-- I think it's something that's really helpful for us. It's... I wanna share this kind of as we close, and I'm sure you guys can rip it apart theologically, but I'm like, I'm big on writing letters to family members and, like, trying to work this out on paper. And so this is, this is something that comes out of my hundred-year family that is explicit to somebody who professes Jesus 'cause it's, it-- not everybody does. Um, but this kinda hits on the position and role thing is, so I wrote, 📍 "You are at the middle of a long table holding what was never finally yours.
The faith came to you from someone. It will go from you to someone, or it will not. same is true of everything else in your estate. The capital, the character, the name. You are not its owner. You are its steward for a season on behalf of a master who will one day ask for an accounting and of a generation that will inherit whatever you manage to send ahead. So invest. Grow it. Be diligent. the buried talent was condemned. measure the return on the ledger that lasts. Build the kind of increase that is still bearing fruit in your great-grandchildren's faith and your neighbor's flourishing when your name on the account has long since been changed to theirs. That is the return God values. And to the husband and wife who have spent their capital that way, the word at the end of it all is not a performance figure. It is a person in a sentence. Well done, good and faithful servant." into the joy of your master