9/10/25 - 2111: Can Christian Investing Compete?
Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the Voice of Collaboration for the Faith and Work Movement.
Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place, where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.
Jim: Nine years ago on July 28th, 2016, Martha and I interviewed Cassie Laymon from Virginia. Cassie wrote a book called, I Found Jesus in the Stock Market. I read the book, did the interview, and my life has never been the same. Cassie explained all about Biblically Responsible Investing and how our dollars talk. If we keep investing in companies that invest their dollars in causes and activities that are contrary to biblical principles and standards, then we are officially funding the kingdom of the enemy.
We got motivated. Totally pumped. After that show, I called my buddy and financial advisor Luke Andrews, and asked him to read the book. I told him that I want my portfolio to reflect the principles of Biblically Responsible Investing. I told Luke that if he couldn't do that, I'd have to find another advisor. I didn't want to. Luke read the book and history tells the rest of the story.
Luke eventually left his broker dealer and found one that promoted only Biblically Responsible Investing and shifted all his clients to Biblically Responsible Investing over the next couple of years. And for about five years, Luke appeared on this show promoting Biblically Responsible Investing every month as being a major sponsor of iWork4Him.
Over the last five years, Luke has seen a continued transformation of his life and his way of serving his clients and through his relationship with Biblically Responsible Investing and Inspire Investing, serving as an Inspire advisor. We wanted to follow up on Luke and see how he's doing. So we invited him back to share what God has been doing in his faith while he lives it out at work as an Inspire advisor. Luke Andrews, welcome back to iWork4Him.
Luke Andrews: It's so good to be here. When you had asked me a few weeks ago, let's do it again, I was excited and I've been excited for this time and just can't wait to share all the updates because it's been a little bit. I do miss Dave Cruz, so I'll make sure I share this with Dave and he'll hear our shout out today.
But I had lunch with Dave. For those that are just listening to me for the first time, back in when we first started out, really once a week on a radio show you guys were hosting, we'd come in once a month and it was the Luke and Dave of Bel Air Wealth Management.
Jim: That's right. Luke and Dave from Bel Air Wealth Management online at Bel Air Wealth Management. And Dave would say ".com".
(laughing)
Luke Andrews: Anyway, I had lunch with Dave last week and he's doing great. His daughter Tammy, Tamara's gotten into the business and they're doing great and he's enjoying life. But anyway, we're here to talk about some updates and some exciting things, but I'm grateful to be here.
Jim: Luke, did you realize it had been nine years since that life-changing conversation?
Luke Andrews: No, I hadn't because I remember, and because it's a story that I tell when I'm sharing this whole biblically responsible journey with prospects or people or whoever wants to listen, is you gave me the book and I'm a skeptic by nature, whether that's good or bad, I think sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. When it's bad, God has to keep bringing other people in their life to to push you along, but having that skeptic nature, I read the book, and then I shared with you, Hey, I read the book. And that's how I left it for a little bit.
And I did leave the book on my desk because whether or not I wanted to believe what was in the book or not, I had been building a business for the past several years on just being a good Christian financial advisor. And there's a lot of good Christian financial advisors out there, not necessarily giving good biblical investment advice, but just good Colossians 3:23 financial advisors: "work hard at whatever you do, as if you working for the Lord and not for man."
So it wasn't an immediate change for me. I read the book, and I put it on the desk. But shortly after that, again God has a way of using other people as well, brought in another person. And he had asked me, Hey, am I invested in whatever it was at the time? I don't recall exactly what he asked me, but it had something to do with biblically aligned or faith-based investing. So this time I went back and read the book again, but I studied the scriptures that were laid out in the book.
I started praying about it and then this is where God started transforming the way I saw investments, 'cause I was probably like many financial advisors or even potential investors today who hear Biblically Responsible Investing, they're not really too sure about it. They're super comfortable where they're at. There might be some misconceptions on, "I'm not necessarily profiting from abortions. I'm not really profiting from the distribution of pornography." So really there, there is this journey that took place the day you gave me the book, but it wasn't like an immediate transformation.
It's taken time and then when you said nine years, I'm like, holy cow. That's, it's been such a fast nine years and so much has happened during those nine years. I can't wait to share more about it.
Martha: And that's the part that I love about this story is how God worked in your heart. Because you, like you said, you were building a practice that was based one way, because that was the way it's always been done traditionally, and then revealed a new way that would've meant a big shift. And I know we're gonna talk about that big shift, but let me ask this question: why don't you think that all Jesus following advisors promote Biblically Responsible Investing? Why do you think there's still a gap?
Luke Andrews: Financial advisors? I got real stories because I've got several friends and other believers that are in the business. Some look at their secular business as a way to minister, which is awesome. Hallelujah. I'm still able to do that, as well as focusing my practice on just Biblically Responsible Investing. I pray with our clients. They send me prayer requests, so these are things that we get to do, leading some to the Lord. We have unbelievers that are partnered with us as well and having that influence in their life.
So mainly, misinformation. This idea that you can't build a biblically aligned portfolio that's gonna keep up with historical returns that they're seeing in their own investment accounts, which is untrue. There's misinformation or maybe they don't see, if you own an ETF or a mutual fund, an exchange traded fund or a mutual fund, you don't actually own the stock per se.
So there's all sorts of ways that, in my opinion, the devil gets in there and just likes to confuse and lie and deceive. So these are actually real conversations that I've had with other advisors who may, who are running their practices how they're doing as a Colossians 3:23 type financial advisor. Yeah, a lot of it just misinformation.
Comfortable is probably another big one. They've had their book of business 10, 15, 20 years to convert a business like that into a BO. Now it's absolutely possible - inspire has several advisors who had huge books, who had been doing what they've been doing for 10, 15 years that have partnered with us. And it is a transformation.
But you mentioned, it has to happen in the heart. God really has to get ahold of you and hopefully the right people in your life to give you that influence and answer those questions about, what does that look like? What's the process look like? I don't want my clients to have a bunch of taxable gains because we're converting it all to Biblically Responsible Investing. Those are legitimate concerns.
But the good news is that there's a process out there, so for any financial advisor who loves the Lord, who is Colossians 3:23, who wants to take this next step and just start praying about and seeking information about BRI, you can contact me directly. I'd be honored to have that conversation or Inspire in general.
Martha: And I'll put your contact information in the show notes, Luke, for people so that they can reach out and have a couple of different options. I think it's important before we get too far into this conversation, to just explain really quickly and we can even put some links to some past shows we've done with you where you've gone into more detail, but why essentially it is so important to understand that if we just own general investments or if we have general investments, that it can actually be supporting things that go against our very biblical principles. 'cause some people may not even have ever heard this concept before and I don't wanna leave them out of the conversation.
Luke Andrews: Yeah, when you own a stock, okay? And if you own an ETF or a mutual fund or the stock outright, you own shares of stock, and shares of stock gives you an ownership interest in the business. And the Bible has a lot to say about ownership, right? Everything belongs to God. We're just managers, right?
And I'm an extension of you, Jim and Martha, as managers of what God has asked you to steward. I'm an extension of that stewardship. So when you look at, just when you start to look at things from a stewardship mentality, I think it changes everything. So when you own a stock, you're going to, your investment in that company is you want a return on the investment.
So you invest in Amazon because you think Amazon's a great online retailer, and they're gonna make a lot of money for you. They're gonna generate a lot of revenues and that revenue, if the stock is doing well, sorry, if the company's doing well, generating high revenues, keeping costs down, nice gross margin, fundamentally they're doing really well. The value of your stock goes up, right? That's that return on investment.
That's the connection when you're looking at Biblically Responsible Investing and just stock ownership. Now, some people might say then why do you shop at Amazon if you don't invest in it? Consumership is different, right? Amazon sells pornography. They sell an abortion drug. I don't use Amazon as a consumer for those things. I got some Muscle Milk the other day. That, that's what I used Amazon for. I don't order pornography and I don't pull from their abortion drugs or anything like that. But when you have ownership, whether it's to a mutual fund, which is weighted with some Amazon stock in it, so Amazon does better, the ETF or the mutual fund value goes up as well, you're profiting from that.
So anything a company does, whether say they sell alcohol, gambling, tobacco, pornography, anti-family values, abortion drugs, supporting abortion, there's a lot of companies that after COVID, you know, and after Roe v. Wade, some of their states banned abortions or brought it way down. There's a lot of companies that said we're gonna pay for abortion travel, and where does that money come from? It doesn't come out of the sky like where the government prints money. They use the money that they're generating from the profits they're selling from selling pornography, from selling abortion drugs. They're using your financial or your investor dollars that you have ownership in to do these things that don't align with biblical value.
So there's your problems, right? When you own a stock, whether it's individually or through a mutual fund and exchange traded fund, when the value of that stock goes up, you get a return on that investment and it's because of what they're selling. So BRI essentially avoids companies that are selling alcohol, gambling, tobacco, abortion, pornography, or even supporting other different philanthropic issues that don't align with biblical values.
And then we also, we don't just wanna screen out companies, we wanna find the best companies, 'cause we've also found when companies are on a mission, and not necessarily Christian companies, we'd love to find those, but companies that are just looking to take care of their employees, they're taking care of their communities, they're taking care of the world, they're making a positive impact, they historically also have a tendency to perform better because people are holding onto those stocks for more than just the returns.
Martha: Yeah. That's so good. Thank you.
Jim: So why do you think - everybody listening today, I'm guessing a large majority of people listening today do not have financial advisors that are investing only by biblical responsible investing standards. So why is it that Jesus followers don't insist on it?
Luke Andrews: Yeah, it's communication, right? It's not something financial advisors are preaching. When I do talk to Christian financial advisors, and I ask 'em have you at least even offered Biblically Responsible Investing to your Christian clients that, if they knew that they were profiting from pornography, they would probably be mortified?
Now, that's just a transformation in the way you think about things though, too. Most people, we've always been taught, we're just investing for our future. We're just investing for retirement. We've never been taught we're investing God's money. And would God be happy with the returns on where those investment dollars are coming from?
And if God says "Thou shall not kill," one of the 10 Commandments, and then we're supporting and we have Amazon - I'm beating up on Amazon today just because Amazon is probably in 90% of our listeners portfolios - whether they own the stock individually, whether it's in a mutual fund, whether it's in an exchange traded fund, they own Amazon stock. Thou shall not kills in the Bible. We know that killing is not good and essentially abortion is murdering and killing of a baby. So if Amazon is selling the abortion drug, that's part of their revenue. Their revenue dictates what their stock price is doing, and that's what dictates your returns.
So it's educational. There's $21 trillion in the households of those who profess to be believers or a Christian, $21 trillion. We could make a huge impact if we had 1% of that, so really it's a messaging thing. It's getting other Christian financial advisors to start having those conversations.
Jim: Yeah. Just an awareness, which is why we're doing the show today. Yeah, it's dangerous when we allow most of our input to come from society at large without putting it through a biblical filter. That's what Biblically Responsible Investing does for your investments, and that's why we love the US Christian Chamber of Commerce.
We surround ourselves with people who love business, the Lord, and the truth. The US Christian Chamber of Commerce has many different opportunities for members from all over the country to connect and learn. And in 2026, you can attend the SWC. What's that? Spiritual World Citizens. SWC2026.com event that Martha and I'll be MCing in Orlando in April of 2026. Use code iWork4Him to save on your registration.
Luke, when you went out there and you said, okay, this is something I wanna do, you found Inspire Investing to move your firm to, to establish where you were gonna grow what you were doing under Luke Andrews. What was it about Inspire that said, that's a company I wanna walk with?
Luke Andrews: From the bottom, not the bottom in hierarchy or anything, just for, I would say, from the person who answers our phones to our CEO Robert Netzly, who you've spoken to, who we've had on the show before, there is a commitment from the bottom to the top, okay, of transforming the way Christians invest God's money. And I didn't have to, I was in a great place with Bel Air Wealth Management. I love those guys. They're doing great things over there. For me it just came down to did I want to create this biblically responsible movement there or do did I wanna join a movement that was set to transform the industry?
And that's really the biggest part for me was I wanted to join something that the vehicle was already moving. I wasn't trying to build the vehicle. But it was already moving, and then every single person was committed to changing and transforming the way Christians invest, plus we give 50% of our corporate net profits to charity. Right now we're doing church plants in Cuba. And when I say "we," it's Jim and Martha's, right? You're partnered with Inspire.
We don't charge you more fees. We just started from the beginning and said, we're giving 50% of net profits away and you're helping build churches in Cuba. We made a big donation to Lifewise Academy recently through this Give 50 initiative. Lifewise Academy, it helps bring biblical education to public schools during school hours? Not after school, not before school, not during lunch, but actually a Bible education class to public schools.
So every single client that partners with Inspire is a part of that. It's an extension of your own household giving without you doing anything further. And then the third thing that why I joined Inspire is the shareholder engagement. We are the world's largest exchange traded fund money manager. We have nine exchange traded funds that we have built and offered the general public. The shareholder engagement is what I'm gonna talk about next and then Give 50.
Shareholder engagement, this is a big deal, whether you know it or not. Planned Parenthood is losing a lot of their funding, but what they're doing is they're starting to use other distributors to distribute the RU-486 drug, the Mifepristone, that you may have heard of. But like Costco, Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens, they're all being pressured by the FDA and other institutions to start distributing the abortion drug.
We just had a pretty great shareholder engagement strategy for about the last year with Costco. They just withdrew their application with the FDA to distribute the MIfepristone. That's a part, another extension, of what Inspire does. When you talk about why Inspire, why I joined - let me back up. When I joined Inspire, there was a lot of faith. Jim and Martha, you guys were a big part of that decision. Christine Heartland was another big part of Har har you'll help me. And some other people were a big part of that decision because Inspire, when I started, I think we were like under 200 million and there was maybe nine financial advisors. This was way at the beginning when we had a handful of exchange traded funds, but we had a lot of faith. And today we manage over 3 billion.
Martha: That is so great.
Luke Andrews: We're talking six years. We are, USA today listed as just recently in 2025 as the third top registered investment advisory firm in America. USA today.
Martha: Wow.
Luke Andrews: I was just looking before I came on with you guys and on Friday, Inc. 5,000 came out with their fastest growing companies and we're on it for the sixth year in a row.
Martha: Oh, my word.
Luke Andrews: FA Magazine lists us in 2025 as one of the top RIAs in the country. When I say it was, God, you guys know this, right? I took a leap of faith and God has transformed my business from where I at when I started a little over six years ago, actually coming up, yeah, six years ago this month.
Martha: Yep.
Luke Andrews: When I started with Inspire, and my business has grown 500%.
Martha: Okay. So I wanna talk about this right here, Luke, because there are people listening - number one, hopefully you're firing up some people that have investments that have never thought about this before, and you know that we get fired up about talking about it because that this is the conversation we've had for years and it is awareness and it's letting people know, and we feel responsible for letting people know that there is another way to do things that's more biblical.
But let me also encourage our listeners - you may not be in this investment world, but what world are you in where you can make the same difference? Taking that step of faith and saying, God's convicting me about something that isn't right in my industry, and I know there's another way to do it, and I just wanna encourage the listeners to try to take that same lesson into their own work and say, what is it that God's been convicting me about that I have not had enough boldness or enough faith or whatever that might be to take that next step?
And Luke, you are such a great example of, you didn't know that your business would grow 500 times or whatever, you had no idea, but you said I know that I don't have a choice. God has convicted me to this, and I need to take this step of faith, and it makes me emotional just thinking about it because Luke, you were willing to do that no matter what the outcome was. And it has been a very good outcome. And people are catching on, but it's much like when we started iWork4Him.
There were very few people talking about even connecting our faith with our work. Now we're talking about connecting our faith with the financial decisions that we're making that are a result of our work, right? That the income that we get, that we are stewards of, like you said, I know I'm getting very fired up. (laughing)
Jim's just grinning over here, but that's where we're all at. When we work, we make an income. What do we do with that income? How does it honor God in the way we use it, stewards of what he has given us? And so that is why this important, this conversation is so incredibly important. Okay.
Luke Andrews: Yeah. Proverbs 15:22: "plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed." When you're facing these decisions on how you can honor the Lord with whatever it is you're doing in your workplace, it's seeking advice, it's getting information from iWork4Him and other resources.
And then having an attitude of gratitude, right? We're in a place some, I know some people probably don't love what they do. They have a tough boss. They're in a tough industry. But understanding that having this attitude of gratitude and being able to display that because wherever you're at, you're gonna be a light. You're gonna be the light of darkness or gonna be the light of the Lord? And so wherever you find your place, whether you feel like, oh, I can't really make these type of impacts where I'm at. Oh, yes you can. It's having that gratitude, understanding that God had you there for a reason and getting counsel.
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Look, before we go, you have shared so much information and people are gonna want to get in touch with you, which all that information is gonna be in the show notes. But what is it you wanna say to the financial advisors out there who are like, yeah, but the returns, they're just not as good when you do BRI and this is too much work to shift over. Speak to the financial advisors listening to the show.
Luke Andrews: Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Jim, it's so funny.
Jim: I said that! (laughing)
Luke Andrews: You used to love saying that. That was like one of the, we would say something and Jim was like
Jim: "past performance is not guarantee future results." Actually, I'd say past performance is not indicative of future results.
Luke Andrews: Yeah. Here's the deal with that is, when I first started on my journey, I started with my own personal accounts, okay? So this is my advice. Don't jump in with both feet. First off, call me. I'll send you a book, Robert Netzly's book. It was just updated so that biblically responsible - any of your listeners who want that book, Martha will put my information in the comments that you just reach out to me and I'll make sure I send you his book, and you can learn more about Biblically Responsible Investing.
But for those financial advisors who might be interested is, number one, pray about it, right? Seek counsel. " The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice." There's so much biblical wisdom in Proverbs. So you start searching, you start counseling. Then when God has shown you that this is the way, this is a way that I could be honored, is you start with your own personal accounts, okay? And you'd give it a one quarter, two quarter, three to six month timeframe and say, okay, here's the investments that Biblically Responsible Investing offers.
Let me see if I can build a portfolio that I would feel comfortable giving to my clients. So that's what I did. I started with my own account, my kids' accounts, and within a few months, I'm like, all right, I can build a portfolio, whether it's conservative or whether it's to the most aggressive, I can build a biblically aligned portfolio.
That's number one. And the second thing is, what are the returns looking like? And some years the secular benchmark is going to outperform, because they have the magnificent seven. That's Facebook, Amazon. Am Netflix, it's Tesla. It's seven of the biggest companies in the world. That's the magnificent seven. We don't invest in any of that because they all have some issues. That's another conversation for a different day.
But when you start looking at historical performances, some years we're gonna do better. Some years we're gonna do the same. Some years we're going to outperform, okay? I will say that we also have some sector models, and I don't, I'm not gonna give returns of our sector model, but our technology model has been absolutely amazing. And it's way past what the s and p 500 was able to do the last three years, at two and a half years, we'll say, so 23, 24, and halfway through 25.
Our technology sector model has absolutely been on fire and amazing. Again, past performance doesn't guarantee future results, but we have an outstanding portfolio management team at Inspire that does these things for us. So for other advisors, so you're not gonna sacrifice returns. Your clients, matter of fact, are gonna be more excited about what you're doing for them than what you're giving for them. Investment returns are a part of what we do. It needs to be, but when you're doing things that are honoring the Lord... investment returns aren't secondary. They're important, but they're no longer what you're thinking about all day and night. If the market's up or the market's down, you're fine. So that, that's probably the biggest thing.
Martha: Luke, before we go, I just thought of something and I wanna put this in the show notes, but is there still that tool where if people own a stock they can put it in and see how it is rated as far as BRI?
Luke Andrews: Yeah. It's www.inspireinsight.com. And that is a free tool. You can put in the ticker symbol, ETF ticker symbol, a mutual fund ticker symbol, and it'll pull up instantaneously, all the reports, and we actually, we don't just say, Hey, this company has a negative score or a positive score.
If they have a negative score, you can actually drill down and figure out why they have a negative score. And then when you click on it, it'll give you the source. It'll give you the website that you can go verify that Amazon does sell the abortion drug.
Martha: Yeah, so if people have gotten curious and they have their own investments in front of them, I'm gonna put this link in there, you can go check for yourself so that you get a better understanding of what you own and why this conversation really matters. And I love that tool because it's private. You can just see for yourself and do a little bit of your own research.
Jim: That's right. Luke Andrews with Inspire Advisors. Another incredible conversation. I love that you've got just a little passion about this.
(laughter)
Luke Andrews: Amen. Yeah.
Jim: Thanks, Luke, for being with us today.
Luke Andrews: I appreciate you guys. Thanks again for having me. Been a little too long, but I was super excited to be here. Appreciate it.
Martha: You bet.
Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, and our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.