Rosa Lee Harden, Episcopal priest and serial entrepreneur, says that a conversation about generosity should bring about the best in us. This conversation certainly does just that! Each minute with Rosa Lee is inspired and inspiring. Rosa Lee shares her journey of faith that led her to bring together her desire to follow Jesus with her financial savvy and to start SOCAP (Social Capital Markets) and Neighborhood Economics, both dedicated to bringing capital to neighborhoods that cannot normally access it and expanding the reach of impact investing. This conversation invites us to think deeply about how we invest our money. We may be born into a consumer economy, but we can think and live better and more in line with the economy God imagines. Rosa Lee’s authentic, wholehearted, and brilliant presence shines throughout this conversation and challenges us to let our faith formation change how we see and use our financial resources. 

Quotations

“I cared more about following Jesus than loving Jesus. I was always wondering why did Jesus do something and how did that impact who we are today.” (5:58)

“Impact investing, people investing in change, is a response to a moral hunger in the market.” (14:30)

“Everybody knows, you scratch an impact investor and you have a faith story.” (15:15)

“A conversation about generosity should bring about the best in us instead of the worst in us.” (17:30)

“The people who live upstream from us determine the quality of the water in our river, and we determine the quality of the water in the river of the people downstream. So we are in it together.” (22:28)

“When you dig into the traditional bank way of doing things and the traditional accounting way of doing things, folks on the ground, folks in the trenches, folks who are in need, know a whole lot more about how to manage money effectively than we do.” (32:57)

“We want to open the eyes of people in the pews to get rid of that idea that when we're talking about being more generous, we’re not coming after your stuff, we’re saying that your stuff can participate in this new economy. Your stuff can be generative in a way that you actually don't lose anything and everybody gains.” (34:10)

We discuss:

• Key moments in her formation as a follower of Jesus (5:38)
• How she became a leader at the intersection of faith and finance (8:30)
• Being called to become a priest while running the Mississippi Business Journal (10:08)
• Keeping meaning alive as a motive for impact investing (12:00)
• Jesus and our understanding of money (15:30)
• Why it’s so hard to talk about money from a biblical, theological frame (16:30)
• The challenge of preaching about money (19:00)
• Biblical and theological threads that have guided her work (20:53)
• Her work with Neighborhood Economics (24:00)
• Building innovative loans funds by listening to people on the ground who are closest to the challenges (33:00)
• The relationship between Christian formation and our every-day relationship with money (38:47)
• Paying attention to the ways in which how you spend your money in your community can improve your community (43:19)
• How to think differently despite the fact that we are born into a consumer economy (47:30)
• How she’s being formed currently and how that is making a difference for her and in her work (49:52)

About Rosa Lee Harden

The Rev. Canon Rosa Lee Harden is an Episcopal priest and self-described serial-entrepreneur. She is executive producer of Neighborhood Economics, and a founder of SOCAP, both dedicated to bringing capital to neighborhoods that cannot normally access it and expanding the reach of impact investing.

Her vocational life has included being publisher of weekly newspapers, trade journals, a business journal and CEO of a ‘Silicon Valley’ start-up. She was ordained as an Episcopal Priest in 2000 and served as Vicar of Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in San Francisco for ten years. She also served as the Canon for Money and Meaning at All Soul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Asheville, NC. In 2003, she developed ‘via media,’ a video curriculum about basic theology for the Episcopal church, at a time when the church was under great stress. Purchased by more than 1000 churches, it brought healing and connection across the denomination. In 2008, she and her husband, Kevin Jones, launched the global SOCAP (Social Capital Markets) conference, the conference at the intersection of money and meaning. In its 11th year, SOCAP18 brought more than 3,000 people from more than 60 countries to San Francisco to accelerate the good economy. 

Now, Rosa Lee is leading F+F: Reimagining God’s Economy, a conference to enable the varied and disconnected tribes of the Christian church to learn a language for making theological sense of money and its uses. 

Show Notes

Rev. Canon Rosa Lee Harden, Episcopal priest and serial entrepreneur, is executive producer of Neighborhood Economics, a founder of SOCAP and a leader of F+F: Reimagining God’s Economy

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

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