What level of passion do you have for spreading the Gospel?

Henry Kaestner, co-founder of Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor Ministries, discusses the importance of faith-driven investing and the joy of communing with God through financial stewardship. He shares his journey to faith-driven investing and the launch of Sovereign's Flourish Fund, an ETF that allows investors to support companies led by godly men and women. Henry emphasizes the need for more faith-driven investment options and encourages listeners to ask their investment advisors for products that align with their values. He also highlights the role of pastors and advisors in equipping believers to live out their faith in the marketplace.

Key Takeaways:

• Faith-driven investing is an opportunity to commune with God and find joy in stewarding His resources.
• Investors should ask their advisors for investment options that align with their faith and values.
• The faith-driven investing movement is growing, and more companies are offering products that honor God.
• Living out faith at work involves seeking God's guidance in business decisions and finding purpose and intentionality in all aspects of work.

Welcome to the Investing with Integrity podcast. My name is Jeff Talarico. I am your host. And let me say that I am beyond excited about our guest today. I am honored to have the co-founder of both the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and the Faith Driven Investor Ministries on the show.

He is also a co-founder and partner at Sovereign's Capital, which is a private equity and venture capital company that invests in faith-driven entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and the United States. And if that's not enough, prior to Sovereign's Capital, he was co-founder, CEO, and chairman of both Bandwidth and Republic Wireless. To say our guest today is electrifying would be an understatement. In fact, he, along with partner David Morgan, founded Chapel Hill Brokers, which was a top-ranked institutional energy derivatives broker in the United States. But business isn't all he does. There is a long list of other ministries that he supports and participates in. He co-founded Durham Cares and was a founding board member of Praxis, just to name a few. So with that, let me officially introduce Henry Kaestner to the show. Henry, we are glad you're with us today.

Jeff, it's a great opportunity. I'm honored, I'm encouraged. I don't know how electrifying I will be, but I'm excited to share with your audience. Thanks for having me on the show.

Well, we greatly appreciate it, Henry. We think that you bring a lot of knowledge to this faith-based investments and understanding what that truly is. So I'm going to start off with you the same. I do all my guests. Tell us something about yourself that not everybody knows.

That's a good question. And a lot of different ways I take it. So one thing that most people do not know is that I am the victim of a generation skipping gene of being a great lacrosse player. So it skipped me. But my father and my grandfather are both in lacrosse hall of fame. All three of my boys play. My youngest is going to be playing for Johns Hopkins University next year. And through the grace of God, is an all-American and really good at it. But I was not. I wasn't. And that's part of my, that feels probably part of my entrepreneurial ambition when I was young, when so many people looked to success in identity and athletics, I couldn't do that. And so I needed something else. And that probably feels some level of the desire I have. And, you know, to be honest, some of that's not healthy. You want to be fueled through your relationship with God and look to honor him. And yet, that was the thing like I finally found like, okay, this is what I'm really good at.

Awesome. You know, being an entrepreneur is hard. There are so many things competing for what our time is, our values, our morals, our ethics, and you hit the head, you know, you hit the nail right on the head when you when you talked about your identity. And you know, that brings up, of course, one of the one of the older podcasts that you had on faith-driven entrepreneur, and that's when you introduced Timothy Keller to the world, basically, and allowing him

to talk to Sovereign's Capital. And that message he gave, there were three things he talked about that stuck out to me like any, I mean, it was great. You know, what are you like? What am I worth? What were the three again? Let me just double check. What am I like? What am I worth? And who gets to say?

Those three things are pretty critical.

Okay, cool. So I love, you know, I surely didn't introduce the world to Tim Keller, but I am grateful for the opportunity that I had to spend a bunch of time with Tim. He was remarkably generous with his encouragement and support of me personally, and then the different programs we've been involved with. He was a speaker at the very first Sovereign's capital LP meeting. And then as we went ahead and...out of Sovereigns capital decided to launch a couple ministries because we just realized we couldn't we couldn't encourage and help as many faith-driven entrepreneurs as we want to. We were saying no to 99 out of 100. But when I went to Tim and said, Listen, I'd love to talk with you about what it looks like to be a faith driven entrepreneur and a faith driven investor. Will you participate? And he had so many demands on his time, particularly in the later years.

And he was very, very generous with his time and his thoughts. And he today is the guy that we feature on, on week one of the faith-driven investor foundations group we have. We have this, this video series we go through both on faith-driven entrepreneur, which is eight weeks. And then on faith-driven investor, which is six weeks with speakers like Tim Keller and Andy Crouch and others. So he anchors that he anchors that by talking about the identity of an investor. And he anchors that in the faith driven investor book that we wrote together with some others to talk about this concept of the fact that we shouldn't be rejoicing in the fact that we're a top quintile investor. We should be rejoicing in the fact that our name is written on the book of the lamb. And that really gets at the sense of identity. It gets at the sense and concept of motivation. Why are we doing what we're doing? Is it to be that on the Midas list, which is the big ranking for institutional investors, or is it that we are...doing our, we're investing and we're storing the capital that God is entrusted with, out of faithfulness and obedience, or even better yet, out of joy and gratitude for the gift of life given us. If that becomes our ambition, and we want to store capital in a way that will commune with the living God and will please him in light of the fact that he is the owner of it all, we're just stewards, then we have this chance to really just get life out of our investing and just to live in, well, the life that's fully life.

I think that that's the way that God designed it, but all too often, as Tim would say, and others would agree, of course, all too often we don't ask him how he wants his finances stewarded.

That's a great point, Henry, and we're so appreciative of you explaining that a little bit more today. The thing that I have found, at least with my clients, is understanding the biblical principles of stewardship. What we're really truly supposed to do with these funds that we've been entrusted with. And you made a great point. Does God own it all or not? If we truly believe that He does,

then the giving away of funds, the integrity of why we do what we do, it's all focused on him. And that's a great point that you brought out. So how did that really play into you and your partner starting Sovereign's Capital?

Well, it starts actually just a little bit before that. So I came to faith as a 28-year-old after a small career on Wall Street where I worked for six years. And then stumbled into a church and came to understand that there's a God in the universe who loves me. And then for the next 10 years, I had this new intellectual understanding and that gave me real sense and purpose. I don't wanna minimize it at all. And I also was spending time in God's Word every day, which is great. I learned that early on when...came to faith, but it was at 38 when I met a guy named Darrell Heald, who came to understand some of the things that Kimberly and I were giving to. At the time, Jeff, we were probably giving away 20%. I thought there was probably a special place in heaven for the double tither. I don't know what we're getting. Box seats Angels games or something like that, but we're getting it. And he asked me this question, and it just sent me real on it, which was, Henry, why do you give?

And I mumbled through something that's probably theologically smized. I can't remember exactly what it was and he can't either. But I do know that over the next six months, it seemed like everything in the Bible had something to do with money. And even the passage didn't. A great example, John six, five lows, two fish. And that message taught me two really important things about stewardship and money. The first one was the guide could take five loaves and two fish and feed five thousand. Right. That's what Jesus did. He can take something out of nothing.

So he actually doesn't need my money. He wants my heart. And he had 100% of that boy's heart that gave up his lunch. And I realized that he had 20% of mine. And when I came to realize that, it rocked my world. And you'd think that it would rock my world in a sense. I mean, anytime somebody says, effectively, in one manner of thinking, that you just lost a big portion of your net worth, some large amount of money in absolute terms. You know, one day you thought you owned 80%, which is some number of dollars, and the next day you actually don't own any of it. You'd think that would be an awful, you know, that would be an awful thing. But that's the kind of counter-cultural, anti-conform to the pattern of the world way that God's economy works. And that what I've come to find out as a steward, realizing that God owns it all. Now, to be clear, my wife and I have not taken a vow of poverty.

Hopefully we have taken a vow of being faithful and obedient, but our sense is that God does want us to enjoy some of the money, but we need to ask him. We need to ask him before we make major financial decisions. But we also understand that he does own it all. You think that would be a bad thing when you lose that much money, lose in quotation marks. And yet it has just completely changed our faith walk, just completely changed how we think about why we invest and then just delighting in that, in that, and the partnership that comes from asking God how he would have us allocate his capital. And the way we allocate capital, the way we invest is completely different than it was, completely different. We have so much more joy, so much more fulfillment. As it turns out, through the grace of God, things have worked out great in terms of investment returns too, so we get to see some financial success that's come to that for yet more money that we can give and invest for him. But boy, it's so much better than a life of just, just to the traditional index fund. So much better.

It adds a dimension of purpose. It truly does. And when you can grasp what the tithe really is and understand that he is only asking for a little back of what he's given us because it all belongs to him anyway.

The more we actually do, the more we allow ourselves to understand his purpose and use it for kingdom purposes, you can't out give God. He has never not taken care of anything that my wife and I have ever planned on doing. I mean, we give away an awful lot because we believe in that, we see it work. The one thing I don't know that I've ever told you is, I also pastor a church. So it's really a dynamic to be able to explain the freedom that we have when we can just give it away. And to have people understand that and having a guest on the show like you, who gets it.

Indeed.

Well, it took me a long time to get it. I also don't want to ever, the faith driven investing movement is never meant to be presumptuous or prescriptive. And some number of people that are listening to this had the ability to give. And, uh, beyond 20% and some number of them don't yet. Uh, and that's not the point. The point here is that the world of faith driven investing is not just for the, the accredited investor. It's for everybody because it just comes from the fact that we have an opportunity to ask God how to store his capital.

And so the faith driven investing in the generosity movement are greatly exemplified by the widow and her might. And they're also greatly exemplified by, as I mentioned it before, what I think is great is unsung hero in the New Testament, which is the boy and John six, right? That's, that's the model of generosity and stewardship that I want to live by. And neither of those people were high network individuals. This is a message that is available for all of God's people. And in each case, can you imagine just way it worked for that boy?

So you give up, you know, you're sitting there as an open-air preacher, he's talking all morning, you're thinking, what did my mom pack me for lunch? You can't wait for, I've had three teenage boys, so I get this. And all of a sudden, it's like noon, and some guy with a beard comes up and says, hey, what you got there? I mean, what's going through the boy's head? And so he ended up, I'm sure the apostle did, and it'd steal it from him. I'm sure the boy gave it to him. But then, to see what ended up happening, like, oh my God, are you kidding me? My lunch is feeding 5,000 people.

And look how many basketfuls are left over. I mean, pardon me. I mean, did he pick up a bad? You almost want Dallas to take this up as a story. I mean, did he take one of those basket full home like, Mom, look, you gave me five minutes to look what I get back. Unbelievable. And I think that that's the promise that's available for every Christ follower is the joy of seeing that. And I think the winner might had the same type of thing, the joy of communion with God that comes from that. And I think that's available for everybody. But

that story when he goes home.

Gosh, I'll tell you, it's really easy to be conformed to the pattern in the world too. By the way, if you'll allow me, I don't know if compliance allow me by the end of this podcast, I would tell your listeners a guaranteed 30 X return that I found. All right. So stay tuned later for that. Maybe it'll come up in a question. If not, I'll throw it in at the end.

it is.

Well, we'll talk about it and we'll see what compliance tells me to cut out or not. So let's, uh, let's change gears for a minute. Let's talk about this new ETF that you guys have just launched with sovereigns.

It's a switch.

Let's do that. Let's do it. I hate that. I should really, I should really. So just so I should follow it with this. Okay. I'm going to tell you a quick story and then I'm going to answer all your questions. I'm going to be a good podcast guest going forward. Okay. I'm going to absolutely follow your prompts. Okay. Here's what I mean by that. Because otherwise people are going to think, what is he selling Amway? This is the cheesiest thing I've ever heard in my life. Okay. Here's the deal. The deal is if you're listening to this podcast with Jeff, right before you tell all your friends that they need to listen to the podcast too.

You're going to realize that you have probably gone through the two first trials that you see in the parable of the sewer, right? The sewer goes ahead and puts a seat out and some amount of the seat gets taken away by birds and some amount of seed gets scorched by the sun. Okay. If you're going ahead and you're drive to work today, you are listening to this podcast. You probably made it through the first two trials. But if you're like me, you got a problem with the third one. It's the weeds that come around and they come around your ankles. You don't even see them and they're all of a sudden they're up there and they of course are the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. But in the Bible when you go back and look at the parable of the Sower, if we can keep those weeds at bay then the Bible tells us what our investment return will be. It'll be 30, 60, or 100-fold and the only currency that matters. And that's something that's really just again been impressed on me which is what kind of return am I really working for?

And for me, if you're like, if you're like me, I don't stand much of a chance of really being able to keep those weeds at bay and off my ankles and just kind of threatening to choke me out if I'm not in a community of others that are helpful and helping me see some of my blind spots where I am being conformed to the pattern of the world or thought patterns that end up betraying the fact that I get impacted as I do to be very clear by the worries of the world and the sea fullness of riches. So that's what I mean by a 30 X return. We'll see what compliance says.

I don't think that'll be an issue, not with mine. So now let's go back to talking about this new ETF that you guys have just launched, which takes you basically out of the VC world into a publicly traded opportunity for people to invest with you, is that correct?

It is correct. Now compliance, this is something, compliance may not have a problem with a pair of those, so our compliance may have a problem with what I can say exactly about the Sovereign's Flourish Fund. But I can just broadly say that the role of faith-driven investing has been, now to be clear, there have been for a long time some great thought leaders in...how Christ fathers might store their investment assets. So you think about Ron Blue, you think about the great work the kingdom advisors does, et cetera. And this is not without exception, but all too often it's ended up looking like, what are Christians against? So, and I, you know, I don't wanna have, own any mutual funds or any stocks that have alcohol or tobacco or not that those things are necessarily all that bad in and of themselves and the right thing, but I'll tell you adult entertainment is bad, gambling is bad. And I just don't wanna own stocks that have that.

So when I look at mutual funds and how many of them own that, and so the industry now for the last 20, 25 years has done a good job of providing products that will screen those things out. And yet, as a Christ follower, I want to be known for what I'm for. So with the Sovereign's Flourish Fund, there's an opportunity to be able to invest in companies that are led by godly men and women that are known for what they're for. And I think that that's super important. And just...

I'll leave it at that because I don't know that I can talk about much more than that. But it's a it's a culmination of a lot of work that we've had because up until now, the work that we've done is largely been the purview of the accredited investor. Venture capital is private equity and they're high minimums just because of the way that roles work in terms of how many people can have in each fund. And there's and also due to the nature of investing in private companies, there's a long lockup. Funds tend to be 10 year funds. That's not a lot of liquidity. But if you can get in with small amounts, which is what an exchange traded fund allows you to do. And you can have liquidity like next week. It's a game changer.

Absolutely. So we're glad that you did that because as someone who runs a practice of what we call biblically responsible investing, where I do screen out investments for my clients so they understand that we're doing things that bring glory to God, and I'm being a steward, if you will, of those types of things, having another tool in our tool belt definitely helps.

So this movement has growing. I've watched it grow for the last 16 years I've been in the business. And just to see how much has come about in the last eight to 10 years is phenomenal. And I don't think it stops here. I think you're gonna keep seeing it. You're going to see, I think, Main Street firms start to take a look at what's happening in the faith-based space. And they very well could take some of their own product and create their own internal screening to provide what's needed in the marketplace. I truly see that happening. I still think that great, great companies like yours.

I do too. And know what it'll happen. It'll happen.

Yeah, well, I think it'll happen when investors are asking for it. I think that that's one of the challenges of this podcast. And it's a challenge that I give to all of your listeners, which is if you go in and you ask your investment advisor, say, listen, my faith is important to me. And I'd like to see what investment options are available that are more representative of the way that I think about investing in the marketplace. That will be heard.

Go ahead.

You will probably find that a good number of people won't have any answers for that at all. And maybe that's, maybe that's the reason to think about who your investment advisor is, but every time you ask for that, it'll be that much more of a vote, if you will, for those people to go back in. And I think that that's the body of Christ coming to realize that God owns it all. And he's doing magnificent things in the world. And we don't need to have just the CEOs of the major investment funds determining what ESG should be. What are the values?

What are the values of the things that need to be voted for in my, in the different funds I own? We're leaving that to a population of people that many of them do not share our faith at all. And so absent us asking our investment advisors for that product, the big guys that are out there, the 800 pound gorillas will be more than happy to vote our proxy votes the way that they see fit. And most people would not be happy if they looked at that voting record.

And I think a lot of that problem is, is we don't know. And again, I didn't realize that was even an option when I started in this business. And I've been a believer for a long, long time to know though, that there are companies that truly care about people. And I think it's, it's more than caring about profits. Now, don't get me wrong. I'll stack up what we do against everything that's out there, and we're not giving up returns any longer. That's not part of the issue. The issue is, are we explaining what we do? You said it earlier that you'd rather, you know, what do we stand for? You know, that's the problem with the American Church is everyone knows what we're against, but they don't tell us or we don't show what we're for. And I think if we truly expressed what we're for, and that's mercy and grace and forgiveness.

And we explained that versus, oh, well, we just don't like the LGBTQ community, which isn't, that's not true at all, but that's what they hear. So I think as we all grow in our faith, as we grow in our businesses and being an entrepreneur or an investor and start demanding these other things based on the Bible, that's when change will happen. And you guys are on the forefront of that.

Well, thank you. And to be clear, there are others too. I think that as we talk through this together, I think about Eventide, whose tagline is investing that makes the world rejoice. So it's not just a negative statement. So, Sovereigns Capital is most assuredly not the only game in town. And this really speaks to the profession that Gods called you into. When we got involved in Faith-driven Investing six or seven years ago, and we started the podcast and the conference and these groups that I was talking about.

Absolutely.

And we really thought, gosh, this is crazy. We're getting in this spot into a place where there's no supply and there's no demand. It's like you walk into a Russian grocery store in the 1980s and there's nothing really on the shelves. And unlike Russia in the 1980s, there isn't really any demand. There's not like a line around the block either to get in. And we're finding five, six, seven years on that actually there is great supply and there is great demand, but really it's not a double-sided marketplace. It's really a three-legged stool. And the advisor is that third leg.

Some number of people otherwise would come out of something like, oh my goodness, I get the guy who owns it all. They walk in and they talk to their Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan or Ameriprise rep and like, I want to make it happen. And then the person on the other side is like, I have no idea what you're talking about. That sounds like a lousy horrible idea. So people that are in your profession are there to be able to be those river guides, if you will, who can say, okay, so there's a ton of supply. Let's talk about what your needs are as a family for income or risk or an interest in geography or an interest in industry, let's put together something that's uniquely equipped for you. It's a big part. So what will really make this movement work are advisors that lean into this opportunity as a service. And it's a, it's a, it's a special, it's a special ministry. Most, most people don't realize that there's is a ministry because they're talking to their clients about something that's near and dear to them, which is money. And in the second, and we have this faith-driven investor, foundation score second one with Andy cross talks about God and mammon Was that look like give us a framework through what you think about it, but you're in there You're on the front lines of that battle in a non-prescriptive presumptuous way But you're able to love on families where they are super important

Thanks, I appreciate that Henry. And that is what we do. We are in it each and every day, wanting to do the right thing for our clients while honoring what we know God is expecting from us. So jumping back to this podcast, and one of the main reasons I started it was education. People need to know that there are alternatives out there you know, the tagline that we developed for this show is wisdom over worth, principles over profit, morals over money, and integrity over it all. So when we say that, we truly mean it. And if you're hearing that for either the first time or if you saw it on the questions that I sent you, does that resonate with you? Is this what our faith driven movement should be about?

Yes, but then I'd add to that too, is that a faith driven investor should add into that a hopeful expectancy that they'll experience the joy of communing with the living God as they allocate His investment resources. And I think that that's what so many people are missing. They're thinking, oh, okay, so being a Christian means another group, another set of rules I gotta follow. And yet, no, this is not, this is an invitation to take you out of this kind of black and white monochromatic existence that you have with your money and your investments and bringing you into the technical world of participating with God. And then as you understand, you know, as at all, seeing these different investment vehicles working like, like honey and the kids, like, look, we, you know, cause like Eventide does such a great job in investing in healthcare. You know, we are a small part of this, you know, this complete breakthrough of this new pharmaceutical is saving lives.

We're part of that. That's how God has asked us to invest our capital. And we had found that five years ago, there's some number of the companies we're profiting off of things that are not healthy, and we don't have any of that in anymore. And so you can get a sense of just like, I mean, that's a form of worship. I mean, communing, it's being in relationship with God in another aspect of our lives. It's not boring, it's not rule following, it's better. It's a hopeful expectancy to experience the life that is fully life.

That's a great way to put it, Henry. I appreciate you doing that. You bring up Eventide and our first guest, the first guest I had on the show was Art Alley, who started Timothy Partners, Timothy Plan 30-some years ago. He came off of Wall Street, very much like you did, and felt this pull of God saying there's a better way. And it was kind of interesting to have him as the father of BRI, if you will on the show and hearing his take that his friends on Wall Street, as he put it, they called him crazy. They said he was nuts. You'll never get an investment performance. And that's when he said it's not about the investment performance because our God will take care of us when we do what's right in his eyes.

And yes, and yet, my belief, my absolute belief, is that you can get great alpha, great investment return, not at the expense of biblical values, but because of them. Lots of people would say, oh, you add another bottom line, almost by default, just by the way the world works. You're gonna get, it's a negative screen, you can't possibly go ahead and compete with all the people that can. That's not correct, it's just not true through the grace of God over the course of the last 12, 13 years, we've seen that play out sovereign's capital. And it's, and it's a false dichotomy to think that you've got to choose one versus the other. And to be clear, he's right. The more important thing is being able to be faithful and obedient to God. And yet I think in doing so because God's economy is different, the, and economists, and we will learn this in micro and macroeconomics, they're based out of this economics of scarcity.

I really think that God's kingdom works according to different rules and it's the economics of abundance. There's this old thing, the guys from Praxis do this really well. The old thing was, you lose, I win. And then there's now ethical investing, which is kind of like we win together. But I really think that there's even a better way. It's just really just bringing God into it, God winning and all parties just really flourishing.

And so faithfulness will be important, not having bad things in your portfolio, incredibly important, but don't think that means, wow, now we have to go ahead and plan differently because we're going to, we're going to suffer and we're not going to have, we're going to have to forget where to make up the 500 basis points of return. Don't think that that's why God's economy works. Guys at Eventide did five star morning star mutual funds, right?

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

Yeah, they have. And, you know, Finney is phenomenal there and listening to him talk about his faith and why he does what he does, and Jason and Robin and coming all together and creating why did they create Eventide. It's a phenomenal story. And again, I think the more of us who are living the biblical way of God's economy and sharing why we do what we do will increase what we're doing. We can look at this and say God wins and we already know he wins, but we can say God wins each and every time. And again, I would love to see another 40 mutual fund companies or ETF firms come out with something that is honoring God, only because it honors God, not just to have a product.

Yes.

I think that's an important part of why we do what we do. It's not about the product. It's about, are we developing something that can honor God and maybe that's the one thing that makes somebody decide to take a leap of faith and try doing investing a different way, like what you guys are doing now. Companies that are run by faith driven people.

Indeed.

So let me ask you, how has living out your faith at work changed your life?

Well, it takes me from being a weekend Christian and going to small group on Wednesday to seeing where everything I do in business and investing is being in partnership with God. And this sounds hokey, right? But I mean, the illustration is like during COVID, you end up working out of your house. But if you're constantly asking God, like God, please be with me in this next call, allow me to, because I run some businesses. So while I'm not full-time anymore at Sovereign, I'm just, I'm part-time and on the executive committee and, and effectively just a great cheerleader for what they're doing. I am full-time on faith driven entrepreneur and faith driven investor. And we're running a, we've got a team, we've got a staff and the very, the part of the work we're doing is, is absolutely community with God, but it's just, it's the setting of the strategy. It's the working with teammates.

on objectives, is making communication. I mean, these are all these times, all these different things. And this is the case when we were Bandwidth and Republic Wireless. It's just seeking God out in real time about businesses and nobody does this better than my partner David Morgan. He prays like a hundred times a day. You know, the whole praying without ceasing thing, I mean, he hit on that in some sort of youth devotional and just camped out there for like his life. But he has these simple prayers. God, thank you, God, help me God, forgive me. He's praying those all the time. And so being in understanding how your enterprise matters to God, because we've been called to create, right? When we're in the business world, we're caught where it's a mago day. We're called to create. Your identity needs to be in Christ, right? We're not the hotshot entrepreneur that's growing at 20% month over month. We are a beloved child of God, whether we are increasing or decreasing in terms of the net bottom line.

But all of these things is we come to see God at work. It's just, it's just better living. It's better living. It's more purposeful. It's more intentional and that can happen no matter what you're doing in life, whether you're pushing a broom, whether you're playing professional sports, whether you are a teacher, absolutely a teacher or whether you're in business. But a lot of people miss that. And I think the reason a lot of people miss that is that by and large our pastors haven't had the language.

through which to really understand how to equip people in the marketplace, because so many of them haven't been in the marketplace. And it's one of the reasons I love, to be clear, one of the marks of a a Faith-Driven entrepreneur is partnership with the local church. That is just, it's non-negotiable. Faith-Driven Entrepreneur, Faith-Driven investor are not meant to be parachurch ministries taking people out of the church. Being a part of the local church, incredibly important. And yet I do have a special place in my heart for those that are run by bi-vocational pastors. Bi-vocational pastors, because they understand what's going on in the marketplace. If you're a full-time pastor and you're listening to this, it all is not lost at all, but do make an effort of once or twice a week getting out there and going and visiting a business owner at his place of business, not at your office, not at a neutral site, like a restaurant, go tour around his factory floor, understand what he's doing. You'll get the great sermon prep material you're looking for and you understand how to give a call to all those people are sitting in your pews.

Awesome and I again I appreciate that because being a bi-vocational pastor I'm with you and I think that's part of what allows me to be able to

That's right. That's right. That's right. I forgot that for a second. 100%.

So, I mean, but that's what allows me to be able to share a message that I'm able to share. It's real life. I get why we do what we do, and so many people don't. It's not ever about the money. It's about doing what God asks us to do. And I will say, you had a guest on the show who I truly look up to as a leader, who is a full-time pastor. But he runs...

What he has as a business and he gets it and that's Chris Hodges You've had him on the show and he's at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham huge church huge ministry But if you ever meet him in person, he's such an humble man But he gets leadership

Yeah.

Yeah, I was with him last week.

Were you really? Yeah, he's in fact that part of part of the

He does get leadership. I was, yeah, at their New Highlands College.

Look what he's done there. Absolutely.

Yeah, they had the, yeah, just unbelievable. So I went to an event called the lion's den, I think shark tank, but Daniel and the lion's den. So it has a faith driven angle to it. And I was in Birmingham, Alabama. So I flew out and I live in Northern California. I flew out to it and they had said, we're moving away from Stanford university this year because Stanford is not big enough to be able to fit all the people. We're going to go to this place called the church, the college of the highlands. And like, I've never even heard of that place, but Chris Hodges is the guy behind it. And it was unbelievable. The facilities. It's just, I was super impressed. Chris Hodges is a real guy. And then, so I sat down with him for 45 minutes or an hour and he does, he has this, well, no, he has this unquenchable optimism. He also has this great dose of reality. And he talks about that a bit on our podcasts about some of the times that are really, really hard, but he has this sense of humility. Um, Uh, and I'm sure there's ego in his life somewhere, but you just don't pick that up and you're like, this is the guy I want to hang out with. And, uh, yeah, he's Chris Hodges is a real deal.

Well, and I think that we in this movement, Henry, there are some people that might have an ego because that's just human nature. But many of us really try to embody Christ, allowing him to work through us in all that we do, giving him the glory and not forgetting that that's where our identity is. You've said that a couple of times today, but our identity is in him. If there's anything in this world that I wanna be known for, that I follow him. You know, if he chose tomorrow to take away everything that we have, everything that he's blessed my family with, so be it, it's his choice. He's allowed to do his will. And I can accept that because, you know, scripture's very clear. He clothed the lilies of the field. He provides food for the sparrow. He'll take care of us as well. And it's just...

Yes.

Truly believing that and it's so hard with what we get shown on tv or you know through advertising well you've got to have this it's the latest and greatest and if you don't you're nothing and that is such a lie from the enemy

Indeed, it is.

Well, we've been together now for pretty close to 40 minutes. And Henry, I know your time is valuable. I really thank you for being part of what we're doing here on the Investing with Integrity podcast. The one thing, the last question I want to leave you with is, what didn't I ask you that you're just dying to get out?

Well, I'll tell you, we, I don't know that there's a perfect answer to this, but the one I'm going to give you is that we close out our podcast that we do at Faith-Driven Entrepreneur and Faith-Driven Investor with the same, the same question every time. And I asked the guest this just last week on the Faith-Driven Investor and Faith-Driven Entrepreneur, and Podcast, which is we ask our guests, what are you hearing from God in his word that is, uh, that is challenging you. And it may be something today or something last week or within the last month. And, and the way that I'd answer that question is twofold. One is I listen to the Nicky Gumbel, Bible in One Year App, when I run. I love it. I'm grateful for it. And he's been unpacking Jeremiah in a way that's really profound. I mean, it's just talking about being conformed to the pattern of the world. Israel at the time of Jeremiah was being conformed to the pattern of the world. They're having all sorts of idle problems. And and it didn't go well for him, right?

And so there's this real warning. It's just like, look, I'm going to shake things up and Nebuchadnezzar is going to be an instrument of my will. He's going to come down and he's going to take a lot of you into captivity. And some of you are going to start, some of you are going to fall by the sword. And that's a real, it's a real warning. So this isn't, I, I might take on this as not an Armageddon end times type of thing. That's not where I'm getting at, but I do see different areas of my life that I live out that are not characterized by just a full obedience to God. I spend way too much time thinking about youth sports, for instance. Right. And some of your people is like, there's nothing wrong with youth sports. And there isn't. It's just the amount of time I spent thinking about that for my three voice is probably wrong. Right. So for me, that's something when I was, when I listened to Jeremiah, I'm thinking, well, what am I at? Well, I'm not doing bail worship or moleck or anything like that, but are there things in my heart that I tend to worship more than others, but then, you know, there's a hopeful message in Jeremiah too.

About God coming back and loving his people as they return to him. And so that's what that's what I'm hearing this morning.

Thanks, Henry. I appreciate that. Well, again, thank you for being on our show today. I look forward to seeing you again at another event and keeping up with you, of course, on your podcast. And I appreciate your time again. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed, Henry.

Jeff, thank you, incredible honor to be with you and your listeners. God bless you all.