Robin John (CEO of Eventide Asset Management)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

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Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5 mereChristians. Calm and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. Jordan, I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as floor Layers, SEO strategists and judicial law clerks. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Robin John, CEO of Eventide Asset Management, a pioneering asset management firm that seeks to make the world rejoice through their investments. And they're doing that at a pretty remarkable scale. With more than $7 billion in assets under management. Robin and I sat down recently to talk about how to guarantee eternal success in any endeavor. We talked about the six criteria that Eventide uses to evaluate investments that make the world rejoice and how we can stop thinking selfishly about our investments, about our votes, and about our time. Trust me, you are not going to want to miss this terrific episode with Robin.

John. Robin, John. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast, brother. So thrilled you're here.

Thank you so much, Jordan.

This is, this is super fun. I've been reading your story for a long time. You've been reading my kids book to your kids for a long time. And now we get to hang live, right?

And hey, listen, I got to start because I hate it when podcasts assume.

That everybody in the audience understands the job that people do.

So before we talk about Eventide specifically, let's start with a 60 second synopsis.

Of what an asset management firm does. Explain it to my 10 year old, Robin.

Yeah, so really we are allocating capital. So the question is, where should capital be allocated? And ultimately, when you're allocating capital, you are allocating capital into real companies, real businesses that are either serving real needs of the world or they are just allocating capital into businesses that might be trying to generate profit through exploitation. And what happens is the way that the stock market has been set up over the past 30 years or so, really going back to the 70s, the last 50 years or so. What's really happened is that people have forgotten the true purpose of investing, which is the allocation of capital. And the focus has been about owning the market, diversification, minimizing standard deviation and sharpe ratios and beta volatility. And ultimately, people no longer, including Christians, no longer know what they're investing in. Recently I was talking to one of my co founders at Eventide and we were talking through the book of Revelation 18, where the apostle John tells the church to come out from Babylon. And it's interesting when you study that, because in Babylon, the merchants were trading good things and bad things, right? So you see the trading of olive oil and bread, but you also see the trading of men and their souls, the trading of slaves. And John is telling the church to come out from Babylon. So you know, my co founder, one of the co founders was asking me, robin, imagine if there was a Babylon 500, would God be pleased if the church was investing in the Babylon 500? So really, we as Christians should think carefully about our work and about our investing and the impact that we're having on the world.

It's really good. I'm excited to dig into how Eventide is doing this differently. But first let's back up a little bit. We probably don't have time to hear the full Robin John story today, but what's the founding story of eventide?

Yeah, so 2007, I started praying with Finney, the co founder of Eventide. There are three founding members. And before that I was struggling with the sacred secular kind of mindset and I was praying that God would call me into ministry because the understanding that I had about work was that the work that mattered to God meant work of a pastor, work of a missionary. And I would pray for a calling. Then I ended up losing a job and I found myself in my parents basement next to the washing machine and dryer, just praying that God would call me into ministry. Because I didn't think that like everyday work mattered to God. I thought that I was a second class citizen and I was longing for something greater in terms of purpose. And it's that prayer that ultimately led to the founding of Eventide. We prayed for Finney, myself, my brother Jason. We would fast and pray once a week for months. And we had different ideas on how we could maybe do something together to honor God. But ultimately we agreed that starting this investment firm was the thing to do for us.

I love that so much. I want to read something that I loved in the telling of the founding story on Yalls website. It says, quote, what if we underperformed or failed? With continued prayer, we came to a conclusion. The question was whether we would follow God's calling or not follow. And here's the part I loved to follow was success, regardless of what else happened.

And you're talking there about the, about the risk, right?

The very real risk that you guys could start this thing and fall flat on your face.

And I want to hear you talk more about this because I think a lot of Christians who experience failure after.

Taking a leap that they felt God calling them to take have interpreted that failure as missing God's call on their life. But, but God doesn't call us success necessarily.

He calls us to faithfulness. And it sounds like that's what you.

Guys were saying at the beginning of this journey.

Am I, am I reading this right?

Yes. And you know, sometimes there are entrepreneurs that will reach out to me. I find myself speaking to entrepreneurs as much as I do investors. And they're often dealing with anxiety, worry, and asking me how I dealt with that in my early years. Maybe, maybe it was unfair because I mentioned losing a job. I was actually fired from a job, just to be clear. I lasted, the job lasted for maybe two months or three months. And you know, so from a worldly perspective, I was already a failure. And you know, that was very embarrassing for me because I've always excelled, you know, in school and whatever. And that prayer in my parents basement was a time of just secretly praying at first. And that's why I would sit by the washing machine and dryer because I didn't want anybody to see me crying and praying before God late night because they didn't even know I was fired. And so for me, at that point, I already saw myself as a failure. And through the prayer, what I understood is that worldly success and failure really is not the goal anymore. The question is, am I doing what God wants me to do? And if I am, walk in that every day. Because if we aim at something that is anything other than faithfulness to God, making God happy, then ultimately it's the wrong goal at the end of the day. So really there is still a question of failure and success. But the failure and success really comes back to faithfulness. If I'm not being faithful, if I have not honored and kept the commandments or kept the promises I've made to God. Even recently, my mom came to me and said, robin, I saw you one night praying by the washing machine. I came down to wash clothes and I just walked away because I saw you there. And she said, whatever promises you made to God during that prayer, make sure you keep it. And so even as we deal with worldly success, we have to remember to continue to be faithful, continue to remember why God has given you the success in the first place. Like Deuteronomy 18, God talks about wealth creation. But then he says, ultimately from that point on when you read it, there's a reason why God is given people the ability to make wealth. It is ultimately to be a blessing in the world.

Yes. Yeah. Which brings us to Eventide, you guys. This is all over the website and all over your interviews, but you said many times that Eventide is on a pursuit of investing that makes the world rejoice. In other words, we are blessed so that we might be a blessing to the world. Talk more about this. What do you mean when you say you're on a pursuit of investing that makes the world rejoice? Rejoice. This sounds like Proverbs. Sounds like an old Tim Keller sermon that I love. What's going on here?

Yep, definitely comes from Proverbs. Proverbs has two verses, actually. One says, when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices. And when the wicked prosper, the people groan. The other verse says that when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices. And when the wicked are defeated, there are shouts of joy. So why is that? It's because the righteous of people that prosper by taking care of the city and the poor in the city. Right. It's not just. Yes. So they look out for those that they are supposed to look out for. The wicked are people that often prosper through exploitation, through plunder, by taking advantage of somebody else. So when the wicked are prospering, the people are groaning under the weight of that oppression. But when the righteous are prospering, the city is shouting for joy. Because when the righteous prosper, the whole city is prospering. So the tagline, investing that makes the world rejoice, we came up with that because we believe we are participating in a form of investing that is about uplifting the needs of the world, uplifting the poor. Uplifting. Basically, we look at six stakeholders, six neighbors to a business. When we invest, customers, employees, supply chains, host communities, environment and society. So we want to be investing in companies that we believe are loving those stakeholders, those neighbors. Well, the love your neighbor principle is the second great commandment in the Bible. I think the first time that verse is found in the bible is Leviticus 19. It's speaking to business people. It speaks to farmers, vineyard owners, and tells them to love their hired servants, love the poor in the community, and basically says, love your neighbor as yourself. So as business people, we all have neighbors that we are responsible for that. And at eventide, as we are investing capital into businesses, we're trying to find the businesses that are doing that well.

It's really good. And, man, when you're. When you're reading those verses from Proverbs, the wicked, the description of the wicked, man, it sounds like. It sounds like something straight from a Hollywood script of all these, you know, Wall street movies made in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, where I think investors have become one of Hollywood's favorite villains in our global narrative.

I recently was telling a group of investors we need to write a new script for Wall street for Hollywood, where investors are heroes and not the villains anymore. Because in all of the movies, Wall street money never sleeps. Other people's money, the Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room, Margin Call. Every single movie made about investors is pretty bad.

It's pretty bad.

Yeah. And I think we, as Christians, we have an opportunity to bring redemption to.

Wall street because that's the biblical narrative. There's a biblical narrative which says that investors can be, when following the righteous ways of the Lord, recast as heroes rather than villains in these stories. Can you make that case here?

Very much. And, you know, ultimately, when we study the Bible, Starting in Genesis 1, you see that God is a worker. He's a creator, and he calls good everything he creates. And Genesis 1:26, it says, we were made in God's image so that we can have dominion and we can rule. And King David writes about that later, that we have been given dominion over the work of God's hands. So as investors, we have dominion over the work of God's hands. It's incredible to think about that. You know, I recently took my family to Italy, and I was looking at the statue of David by Michelangelo, and I was just thinking to myself, imagine if Michelangelo said, robin, I am giving you dominion over the work of my hands. I would mess up the statue of David. You don't even want me to touch his lock of his hair. I would totally mess that up. Yet the God of the universe has given us dominion over the work of his hands, which means that he has uniquely gifted us and trusted us and equipped us to carry on the good work that he started. And I think that's why he had to make us in his image. Right. He made us in his image so that we can reflect his image in our work. And as investors, what does that mean? How do we reflect God's image in our work? So that's a big question that I've had in my mind ever since the founding of Eventide. What does it mean to really reflect God and His image in our work?

I think you could do worse than summarizing it as investing that makes the world rejoice. That's a pretty good start. Let's talk more about how you guys do this differently at Eventide. Right. And for what I could tell, navigating through the website, it's really this business360 framework. That's a big part of the how you guys execute that vision.

Can you talk us through that framework? I think you touched on it a.

Couple of minutes ago.

But can you go A little bit deeper in how you guys think about.

Investment opportunities that make the world rejoice.

So first of all, we have an avoid, embrace, Engage framework. So we want to avoid ill gotten gain. Proverbs 1 speaks about avoiding ill gotten gain. It tells us not to share a purse with people that are plundering. And that's really where Eventide started. As Finney and I were praying, we said, okay, we have to avoid ill gotten gain. So we made a list of things that we just didn't want to profit from or support by the allocation of capital or through the allocation of capital. That included things like abortion, pornography, tobacco, weaponry, violent video gaming, environmental harm. So we had a gambling. We had a whole list of things that we wanted to avoid investing in. But what happened is I really believe that God was answering prayer. And right before the founding of Eventide, the founding of our first fund, a person named Tim Weinhold came into our lives and he ultimately said, I know what it means to be a Christian. I, I know what investing is. Put that together for me. And Finney and I talked about avoiding ill gotten gain. He said, that sounds great, but why are you only asking the question about what you're avoiding? Why are you not asking the question about where you should be allocating capital? If investing is the allocation of capital, shouldn't the question be where should Christians allocate capital? And I think that's the most important question ever asked in the history of Eventide. So we started with an avoidance framework. So now it's avoid, embrace, embrace good companies that are doing good things in the world, that are loving their neighbors, that are creating compelling value. We want to try to lean into the companies that are promoting human flourishing. So we start with themes of human flourishing, whether it's like health care, cybersecurity, clean water, safer transportation, but whatever the themes are, we look at all the industries and then we're trying to find the best themes that we want to partner with within those industries. And that's where our investment research starts. And then once we start investing in a company, there's an engagement process as well. So we continue to engage the management teams. And there are times where the engagement will not be go in our favor and we will have to divest from the company. An example of that recently was with the Uyghur people in western China. We found that we were investing in solar panels.

Yeah, I was hoping you were going to tell this story. You told me this before. This is good.

Yeah, we were investing in solar panels and we love the theme of clean energy. But then after investing, we found out that there were slave labor in their supply chains. So, you know, in western China, there's a group of people called the Uyghur people. They are ethnic and religious minorities, they're Muslims living in western China that the government is trying to re educate and convert into being communist atheist. And ultimately these men were being locked up in internment camps, re education camps. Soldiers were living at homes with their wives and children. Rape was happening, torture was happening, and American companies were benefiting from the slave labor. We ultimately reached out to companies and we wrote white papers, reached out to other asset managers, reached out to Washington D.C. even. And ultimately, I don't want to take credit because I know others who are also putting pressure on these companies. Many of these companies created bifurcated supply chains so that the clean supply chain was coming into the US So just to be clear, these companies were mining polysilicon, metallurgical polysilicon, and there were slave labor within the supply chain from the creation of the cells, the wafers in gods, all the way to the creation of the panels. And so these companies, they started sending the tainted supply chain to the rest of the world and the cleaner supply chain into the US that was not sufficient for us. So we ultimately had to divest from a number of those companies.

How do you communicate that decision in a winsome way that glorifies God?

Yeah. One of the things that we've been mindful of since we started was we're trying not to be antagonistic. We're trying not to show up at annual shareholder meetings, holding up signs. And you know, what we really try to do is to be good partners with the companies we're investing in. And ultimately we don't invest at all if the company's products and services are not in line with our biblical views and values. But once we're invested, if we see management practices or something like what I just mentioned, that surprise us, that's when we start engaging. We will engage, you know, like as partners. And ultimately, you know, we are investing as ownership. And we treat these companies as though they are, you know, we are owners in the companies. We will engage management teams. It's also a good opportunity for us to engage from a faith perspective as well, just to. There have been times where companies will be promoting an agenda in order to promote what they believe is loving for their employee base. And at times we will engage the companies and advocate for religious views as well and ask the company whether a certain decision is fair and loving. To the Christian or the Muslim or the Hindu employee. Fairness to all employees is something that we also promote through our engaging companies.

Yeah, that's good. What I'm hearing you saying is the products and services these companies produce, the what matters, but so does the how, right? So solar panels, the what of that business are good. How they're going about building the solar panels through slave labor, not good. Turn the thing the other way, Robin. Like, look with an even tide. What you're doing is clearly God honoring.

Right?

I think God smiles upon your desire to invest, invest and make the world rejoice. But where are you most tempted, personally, within the business to dishonor God in the how?

Like, what's most challenging in how you're.

Building this business to ensure that you're following Christ's commands?

Yeah, that's a difficult question for me. Just knowing my personality, I think it's just impatience at times. And, you know, maybe I could lose patience with people more quickly than I should. And sometimes I have to remind myself that I am the founder or the co founder and maybe not everyone will share this level of passion that I might have for this work. And so I think the area where I need to constantly be reminded in terms of just loving others is just having patience with others and believing the best in others.

Yeah, it's really good. You mentioned both success and failure come for the Lord, right? He uses all things for our good. You talked about being fired early in your career.

Can you look back on that experience.

Now and praise the Lord for it? And if so, why? What specific good have you seen come from that?

Yeah, very much so. First of all, I just feel like God is used that situation to do something amazing. And I look at every, like, small part of it and there's no way I was smart enough. Just even the word eventide means evening the coming of the night.

It's an old English word, Right?

Old English. And Jesus said, I must do my father's work while it is still day, before the night comes, because no one could work when the night comes. So whenever I say the word eventide is a reminder to me that I'm doing good work. And I mean, like, to be honest with you, I'm not smart enough to come up with our name eventide. But like, that's just one example. I just feel like God has brought the right people here and really blessed this company and blessed the work that we're doing. And when I look back at what I was doing and what we're doing now, it's Just incredible what God has allowed us to do. And I have such deep, deep purpose now and I feel a sense of calling. And I'm not implying that I did not have calling in my last work, but I had not understood it at the time. And I would also say, just to give a small example, I remember at our 10 year mark I looked back at the job I was fired from and at our 10 year mark our company here was giving away a hundred times more than what I was making from the job. I got fired per year. And I look back at all of this. I'm just so thankful to God for just letting me be a part of this.

Yeah, that's so good. I love that so much you said before. I can't remember if I read on the website or if it was in our pre interview, but you hope to inspire other Christians to think about the power of their work to promote human flourishing and the global common good.

End quote. And I love that you're being explicit about this because in my experience, man, many Christians I know do not feel.

The call to promote the global common good. They feel the call to personal righteousness and sanctification. They feel the call to share the Gospel and quote, unquote, save souls, but.

Not seek the welfare of the city.

Not seek the global common good. So beyond what we see in Proverbs.

And the passages you already mentioned make the case here that our listeners are called to be engaged in making the.

World rejoice, that we are called to.

Lean in and seek the welfare of.

The literal cities we're in and the global common good.

Yeah. You know, even when the exiles were called back, well, when they were exiled, we see the Bible verse that says, seek the welfare of the city, for in its welfare you will pretty much find your welfare. So I do think that the Bible is very clear that God has made us in his image so that we can promote the common good. We see, you know, Paul writes to the Colossians. He writes, work not as unto human masters, but as unto the Lord. We are working as unto, we are working for human masters. But Paul is saying, but still work as unto the Lord. And you see that principle throughout the Bible. And one of the things I also want to say is that when we are working, just everyday work, we are this principle of avad in the Bible, in Genesis, in Exodus, you see that avad is a word for human work. And we see that Pharaoh is asking for the peoples of Odd and God is asking for the peoples of Aad. Avad in Exodus means Worship, service, and work. And so there's a competition between Pharaoh and God for avad. If our avad is done properly, our work, our worship, our service, all belongs to God and not to the world, not to Pharaoh. But I think one thing I wanted to say also in response to your question is, yes, I agree with you. I think most Christians today focus on righteousness, integrity, and they forget about the common good and human flourishing. But I would say that even when it comes to righteousness and integrity, the focus at times is too much on this idea of giving. Right? So make all you can to give all you can. Mindset.

Come on, go there. Yes.

Yes. So I really do believe that if a Christian person is truly a person of integrity and truly living our righteousness in our work, that we will be promoting the common good. If we are, if we in fact do truly walk in integrity across all of our life, across our work, not just our giving, but also how we make our money, then the world will naturally become a better place, because when the righteous prosper, the city will rejoice. That's why John Wesley preached, make all you can to give all you can, but make all you can without hurting yourself or your neighbor, in body or in soul. So we have to think about both, both about how we make our money, what we do with the money after we make it.

I think there's been perhaps an overemphasis on what we do with the money once we make it in Christian communities. Right, Listen, I'm all for financial generosity. There's clear commands in scripture to this. But I've seen too many Christian entrepreneurs justify mistreating their employees, not caring about the supply chain, not care about the details of the. Of. Of justice and how they're making the products, all in the name of, well, I'm doing this for the Lord because I'm making a lot of money so I can give it outside of the business. Right? And I think it's a really, really dangerous place to be in a way. I think it's just another form of workspace righteousness. Right?

It's like, yeah, I'm not concerned about.

What'S going on within the business, but, Lord, how much I'm doing for you by writing this big check to this ministry. I think it's a really dangerous place to be spiritually.

I agree. I think there's a lack of integrity there. And integrity means wholeness. I think it's very easy to kind of fall into that trap. That is what the world teaches us. But Romans 12:1 is about worship verse 2 says, do not be conformed to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may test and approve the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. So we have to stop conforming to the patterns of the world, the teachings of the world, and we have to renew our minds. And the chapter goes on to say, let your love be without hypocrisy, hate what is evil, cling to what is good. So oftentimes, you know, even when I talk to Christians about investing, first question is, will it lead to underperformance? Because like, everybody's just thinking about investing as a personal thing. Right. No one thinks about investing as a way to bless others. Everything becomes a very selfish, self centered, my own retirement type of a conversation. And I think Christians have to be non conforming ourselves in this way.

How do we move the horizon of possibility there? To ask a massive question that's impossible for you to answer, how do we get Christians thinking in that way?

How are you thinking about that as.

An investor of like, hey, this isn't just for your pocketbook, but for the good of the global common good?

It's hard because I am conflicted, like because I run an investment firm.

Yeah, exactly.

If I preach this message, if I say this, it sounds like self serving bias is selfish. Yeah. Yes, exactly. The issue is most pastors haven't thought about this enough when it comes to the topic of stewardship. The teaching, the preaching is generally about giving and where to give, how to give, how much to give. There isn't enough of a preaching or teaching about where one should work, how they should work, how they should think about their employees, their customers, their supply chains, their local communities in how they work. Ultimately, if you talk to many pastors, they probably don't even know what their church members do Monday through Friday. So they're not properly equipped to lead that part of the Christian person's life. And so I think it really starts with equipping pastors properly to teach because. Because I am conflicted, you know, if I, if I'm preaching this message.

Yeah. But I think it hits at a deeper theme and I'm glad we're releasing this. We're planning on releasing this episode after the election day, so I can go here and hopefully not get political.

Right.

But I do think there's a deeper issue, like when we talk about selflessness.

And we preach out of passages like.

Philippians 2, the application is almost always.

Just in dollars donated and time spent.

But we're called to Be selfless in all things. I believe I'm called to be selfless with my vote. I believe I'm called to be selfless with my investments. Right. This life isn't about me. Right. Like, the gospel frees me from the need to be selfish because I have all I need and more in Christ.

So that go back to Romans 12.

I can be a living sacrifice. Jesus was a dying sacrifice so that I am free to be a living one. And yes, I sacrifice my time selflessly. Yes, I sacrifice my giving selflessly. But I also am called to sacrifice my vote. I'm called to sacrifice my priorities. I'm called to sacrifice the way that I think about my investment dollars. Does this make sense, or am I.

Just right rambling here?

Robin Makes a lot of sense, Jordan. One of the things I'm working on is a book project.

Yeah.

And in the book, I was writing a story for my own family. You know, my parents, my dad's side of the family especially, grew up very poor. You know, my grandfather was a missionary, a pastor, and my grandmother, like, so. So. So. Yeah, so. So I grew up seeing real faithfulness in them. So I slept in the same bed, me and my brother with my grandfather and my grandmother slept right next to us. At nighttime, the electricity went out. There was no bathroom inside the house. And like, coconut beetles will come, come inside the house at nighttime if you turn on a candle. But I've never experienced hunger or real poverty. But I've heard the stories from when my dad was a child. And just to tell you one quick story there, my dad's family, you know, they were starving. My grandparents had eight children. And my dad's older brother is 20 years older than him, his oldest brother, there's eight kids. My dad is the second youngest. And one night, my grandfather's lying in bed crying because his children are hungry and he has nothing to give them. And the way it worked is, like, usually because he's a pastor, if a visiting family from a church comes over, another pastor comes over to the house. Whatever food they had would go to the other family they would serve. And then the family goes to bed hungry. And so my dad's oldest brother gets a job in a different state of India, in northern India. So he goes there, and soon after, he takes a job. So he was sending, like, 80% of his paycheck back to the house to take care of his siblings and parents. And living on the 20%, he soon finds out that he has to lie about expenses because that's expected. So that they could get reimbursements from the government. And he calls his father. His father said, come home. We cannot take that money. It's ill gotten gain. And so now when Christians are challenging me on, hey, if we invest this way, do we lose a half a percent of returns by not investing in tobacco? It's hard for me because like I want to say, I believe biblical principles, you know, are good for this life, not just the next life. I believe that the principles in the Bible lead to a better life today and should lead to better investing today. And I believe that. But at the same time, I don't want to pander the greed question. I want to say to the person, even if you underperform, even if it means you give up a little bit of money, isn't that worth it to be faithful to God?

Amen, man. Brother, so, so good. Such a good challenge to me and to our global audience. Hey, man. Four questions. We wrap up every episode with Fast Forward to the new earth. Isaiah 65 says, we're going to long enjoy the work of our hands.

What job would you love for the.

Lord to give you to his glory on the new Earth? What do you want to spend billions of years doing?

Oh, that's a tough question. Yeah. So I'm going to answer the question differently. I would love to be on a team with King David.

Come on now.

Yeah, I would love to, whatever he's doing, just be on his team. And I would be so happy to hear King David sing Psalm 63, Psalm 103 while we work. Whatever he's doing, I will be right next to him doing that with him.

What an answer. That's a killer answer. That's one of my favorite answers that question so far. It's so good. All right, Robin, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?

Yeah, so I mentioned to you earlier that I've recently bought a bunch of your. Not recently was more than a year ago. The creator in you. I bought it for my children. Then I ended up buying it for other parents, including parents at eventide. And I think that book is actually very powerful for the adult, not just for the child. Some books that I've given lots of copies away of is Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller. Why Business Matters to God by Jeff Van Duzer. Yes. Another book I really value a lot is Work Matters by Tom Nelson. Yeah, those are like more faith and workbooks, but outside of the Christian world, there are books that are very Aligned with these principles. One is called Good Jobs Strategy by Saint Upton. We give away a lot of.

I love this book.

Yeah, a lot of those books. We've probably given away a thousand of those books. Another one is by Fred Reichelt, the book about the Net promoter. Score.

Oh, I don't know this book. I mean, I know nps, but I don't know this book.

Yes, the book is called the Ultimate Question. We've probably given away a thousand of those books. Wow. Yeah.

All right.

Hey, I'll co sign the Good Job Strategy. It's been a long time since I've read this book, but terrific. I believe it was from Harvard.

Or was she from mit?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. Saint Upton.

Excellent, excellent book, man. That's a good one. I haven't heard that title in a long time.

All right, Robin, who do you want to hear on this podcast? Talk about how the gospel shapes the.

Work they do in the world.

Do you know Pete Oakes by any chance?

No.

So I met him in 2008, right when I was starting Eventide. And I haven't kept in touch, but I followed his work. He's doing incredible work. He's based out of Kansas, or he used to be. And what he does is he creates opportunities for inmates to find meaningful work, and he helps bring them back into the workforce in a very dignified manner.

Oh, man, I love this. You've lost touch with them, though.

I could easily reach out to him through LinkedIn, but I. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right.

Send me his LinkedIn profile. I would love to.

I will, Pete.

That's great. All right, Robin, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a bunch of different things vocationally. Some of them are investors, some of.

Them are entrepreneurs, some of them are.

Mechanics, some of them are retailers.

What they share is a desire to.

Glorify God in all that they do, including their work.

What's one thing from our conversation?

Do you want to reiterate to them.

Before we sign off?

Yeah, I just want to say that our work matters to God. Whatever you do, if your work is creating blessing and flourishing for humanity, if you're loving your neighbor. So I'm the CEO of an asset management firm. In no way is my work any more important to God. Maybe it's less important than the work my mother was doing when we came to America. She was a nursing aide for about 25 years. She was cleaning diapers of the elderly in a nursing home, and she hardly spoke English. I'm sure she told me stories about just how people treated her at times. Maybe in her mind she was thinking, I have to do this to take care of my children. But guess what? I wish she knew. Maybe she did, but I wish she knew that her work matters to God because she's not just loving her children and her husband, but she's also loving the elderly that she is serving each and every day. All of our work, if we are loving and serving others, immensely matters to God.

Oh man.

Psalm 37:23 New Living Translation says the Lord directs the steps of the Godly.

He delights in every detail of their lives, every diaper your mom changed, every.

Investment that you make, every widget listener that you're creating today with excellence and.

Love and in accordance with God's commands in a godly way is an ingredient into the eternal happiness of God.

Robin man, I want to commend you.

For the exceptional, encouraging work you're doing.

Every day for the glory of God and the good of others, man. You encourage me that there are serious followers of Jesus doing this work that makes the world rejoice. I love what you guys are doing at Eventide.

Hey listeners, if you want to learn more about Robin and his phenomenal work.

Check out eventide investments.com Robin, thanks for spending time with us today.

Thank you so much Jordan.

Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. If you're enjoying the Mere Christians podcast, do me a huge favor and go leave a review of the show on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're streaming this right now. Thank you guys so much for listening.

I'll see you next week.

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