Most churches have fallen into the trap of only discussing money during budget season or stewardship campaigns, focusing solely on what people give rather than how they live. But what if there's a way to go beyond the tithe and help people navigate their entire financial lives through the lens of faith? Grace Pomroy, Director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary, discovered this gap when she asked a room of stewardship leaders a simple question that left them speechless: "What's one way you've managed money faithfully that didn't involve giving it away?"

In this episode, Grace shares insights from her Faith and Money Learning Lab about how congregations can move beyond the tithe toward holistic financial discipleship. She reveals practical approaches for creating safe spaces where people can explore what it means to spend, save, and earn money faithfully, including spiritual practices that start with God's love rather than shame. Whether you're a pastor, lay leader, or someone wrestling with how faith intersects with your financial decisions, this conversation offers hope for engaging money conversations that transform lives rather than just fund budgets.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile The sociologist Robert Woodnow argued many years ago that congregations often struggle because their leaders primarily focus on things that the congregation cares about institutionally, rather than the things that people care about most in their daily lives. For many people, money is high on that list, if not at the top.

We know from studies that no matter how wealthy people are, money is often still a focus of concern. What difference does Christian faith make to our relationship with money? Many congregational leaders are accustomed to focusing their discussions about money in congregational life toward getting people to give to support the Church, which is important. But how might the Church help people relate to money in God-honoring ways?

Today I'm excited to welcome back to the show Grace Duddy Pomroy who is the director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary and instructor of the upcoming Faith Lead Academy course, Beyond the Tithe. Grace is a lay leader, researcher, author, and teacher who's helping congregations navigate the complex relationship between faith and money in ways that go far beyond traditional stewardship campaigns. Grace, welcome back to Pivot.

I'm so glad to be back. Thanks, Dwight.

So Grace, tell us a little bit about ⁓ why you got interested in this question of the intersection between faith and money.

really couldn't help but get interested in it. When I first went to seminary and heard about stewardship and heard that everything belongs to God, I began to get curious why our stewardship conversations seem to focus on just one narrow piece of the puzzle. And I love the words of Luther seminary Dean Ralph Jacobson, who talks about how churches really love to focus on that 10%. And yet the other 90%, we don't pay attention to at all.

And yet as a seminary student, someone figuring out budgeting and saving and all these different pieces for the first time, because I came to seminary right out of college, I began to wonder, what does my faith have to say about these other pieces in my life? And because I was working with a financial coach at the time, and she was a pastor, she was very eager to dive into that conversation with me and to begin to think through how does one spend faithfully? How does one save faithfully? When I got my first job, how does one...

earn money faithfully. And it was funny because as I looked out at the different resources that were out there, I realized this was actually something unique. There weren't a lot of people who were having this conversation, and yet it was something people seemed to be longing for. As I had conversations with family and friends where money would come up, people began to wonder a bit about this.

So why is money so hard to talk about then in church?

I think money is often hard to talk about in church because, to be quite frank, most of our churches have not talked about money well or at all for the last couple of decades. It's really difficult for us to bring up this topic often because we assume that it's gonna be a self-serving conversation, that if we talk about money, people are gonna assume it's about generosity. And to be truthful, a lot of us have old tapes that play in our heads. The second that we hear any scripture about money,

We have some old sermons, old teaching ideas, some good, some not so good, that come to mind for us when we hear those, and we just can't seem to escape them. So I've heard from many pastors who will preach their first sermon around money and think they've done a really excellent job. And people come up to them afterwards with a lot of ideas that were not in their sermon that they heard through the old tapes in their heads. It takes a while, and it takes a lot of courage.

to begin to work through some of those ideas as a congregation and to really begin to shift the culture around money. But I think the other reason why this is difficult is because we've only ever talked about money in one way for a long time. I certainly know of congregations who've talked about money in all of their life, but most people that I talk to say my church only talks about money when it needs some, or when we're doing our annual budgeting process as a part of our annual meeting.

If that's the only time money comes up, it's gonna take some time and effort to begin to shift that narrative.

So share some of what you've learned walking alongside congregations, which you've done for many years, engaging these questions. What are some key insights or best practices that you've discovered?

So I gave a presentation on this topic last year in January, and it was to a group of congregational leaders who were interested in stewardship. These folks were showing up in a January day in Pennsylvania to talk about stewardship. So I thought, this is the right group to talk about faith and money with, because they've already signed up for a lot, right? But what was interesting was, as we began to talk about how faith and money went together, I started out with this question.

of what's one way that you've managed money faithfully that didn't involve giving it away. And to be frank with you, I thought this was a fairly easy question. I was excited to see the stories they would come up with. It was a room of 20 to 30 people. I gave this workshop two times. I figured at least for those who didn't know, they'd get to hear great other stories. But one of the times I offered this workshop, a pastor stood up and said, Grace, I don't think I can answer that question. I said, well, tell me more. He said the word

faithfully is really throwing me off here. Because to me, the only faithful way to use money is to give it all away. And I began to realize that for most people, that's the only message we've ever heard. So how do we begin to unpack that? So as I was in conversations with others on the faith lead team and across the seminary about this topic, I realized we needed to get some more congregations in on this. So we invited

a group of congregations to work together in what we call the Faith and Money Learning Lab, where we began exploring some of these ideas and sitting with them, testing out spiritual practices to see if it might help us to engage this topic around faith and money. And we said from the outset, this is not about increasing the generosity to your congregation. Now, that could be an unintended consequence. I'm not saying it won't happen. But if you go in with that as your primary motivation, people will be able to smell it on you.

And the second that they do, they're not gonna open up about how they invest their money, because they're gonna be afraid you're gonna judge them for putting money in the stock market and not giving it away. They're not gonna talk about how they spent money on an anniversary vacation with their spouse, because they're gonna be afraid that you might look down on them for not having given money to an organization that the church cares about. So in this process, we began to unpack what might these processes look like. And what I heard from the congregations,

was we want to look at scripture, especially from the Mormon line, especially Lutheran congregations in this particular group. They said, we don't often approach these scripture verses about money. We don't even know how to go there. And in fact, sometimes we run for the other texts rather than encountering these particular gospel texts around money. So we want you to help us be able to sit in these texts, give us some spiritual practices that allow us to get into the text.

and then some reflection questions to really allow us to consider it together. The fun part about this group was that we had pastors participating as well as lay leaders. And one of the things we did when we came together is we would practice the actual practice together, get their feedback, refine it a bit, and then they would take it back to their congregation to give it a try and give us more general feedback on how it went so that we continue to course correct the process.

And we developed about five practices together that we began to form into this larger faith lead course that will be coming out later on this year.

So I'm curious about these practices because I think often ⁓ pastors or church leaders will think that the only or primary way to engage this conversation is from the pulpit, right? And the pulpit is, of course, very important. But practices are much more participatory, conversational in those ways. Say a little more about what some of these practices are. And do you even have an example of one that you could walk us through?

Yes, I'd love to walk you through an example, but just to comment a little bit for those who might be a bit nervous, to be frank with you, leading one of these practices, especially as a pastor or other leader in a church that's just a little nervous about talking about money, takes a lot of the pressure off of you. Because this is not a didactic conversation where you're sharing all of your stories and opinions. You might bring those to the table, but this is actually something where we let scripture speak for itself.

And then the variety of community voices come together around this. So you can learn alongside of the people in your community, which I think is a really rich and unique experience. So I'd love to share with you one of my favorites. I will admit this is not one of the first practices that I would have people do. And the reason is because I think it's one of the scarier, if you'll permit the word, texts in the Bible around money, which is the rich young ruler text.

When we began this process, I realized I was going to have to sit with this text. It's one that has kind of followed me or stalked me for a really long time. I didn't know how to encounter it. And I could feel as I was talking with this group of congregations that we all needed a place to encounter it together. So through prayer and through conversation with one another, we decided to go this route.

So you'll notice that this particular practice actually involves two different spiritual practices. We're going to do a meditation at the beginning. And I'm actually going to invite us to do this together on the podcast. So whether you are driving in your car, you can still do this meditation. If you're working out, whatever you're doing while listening to this, you can join in. And then I'll describe the second practice so you can see how I invite people into this text. So we're going to begin with a little meditation.

on what God's love looks like. And I have to say, one of the pastors in the Faith and Learning Lab group really pushed me to say, Grace, I want these spiritual practices to encompass all five senses. So you will see that come into play here.

So we are going to begin by meditating on God's love. This is something where I want you to get into a comfortable position. I want you to close your eyes if you're able to do so while listening to the podcast. And I want you to begin by considering what God's love sounds like. I encourage you to be creative and playful. There's no right or wrong answers. You might recall your favorite verse of scripture.

a beloved hymn, or the encouraging words of a friend. You might also hear sound without words, like the rustling of leaves or the crash of waves on the ocean. Imagine those words or that sound in your head and listen to it for a few moments.

Next, we'll consider what God's love looks like. You might recall a particular person or place that embodied God's love for you. You might visualize an experience of God's love in your mind. You might even imagine what your favorite Bible story looked like. Take a few moments to gaze at that image in your mind.

Next, we're going to consider what God's love feels like. If you were to reach out and touch God's love, what might it feel like? I invite you to get creative. Would it feel like the fur of a beloved pet, the hand of a loved one, the bark of a tree in the woods? Let your mind wander and settle on a particular sensation. Take a few moments to imagine what it feels like to touch God's love.

Next, we'll consider what God's love smells like. You might choose a smell associated with one of your favorite Bible stories, like bread and fish from the feeding of the 5,000, or a crackling fire like the spirit descending on people in Pentecost, or a smell that brings you comfort, like your grandmother's apple pie, or a freshly laundered sheet. Take a few moments to breathe in the scent of God's love.

will end with tasting God's love. You might recall the taste of bread and wine from communion. You might imagine a favorite flavor, like cinnamon, honey, or garlic, or even a favorite food that reminds you of God's warm embrace. Take a few minutes to recall the taste of God's love.

and we end our spiritual practice with prayer. God of infinite everlasting love, we give thanks for the many ways you are present with us. You use every one of our senses to communicate your love to us. Your love surrounds, empowers, and holds us even in those moments where we can't detect it. In this time together today, may we experience anew your love for us. Amen.

After that practice, we jump into reading the text together using one of my favorite ancient spiritual practices, which is called I wonder, I notice, where we read the text in full aloud once with no commentary. Then we read the text again.

And people are invited to actually shout out and interrupt the reader with their own wonderings about the text. And this could be very philosophical, theological, deep wonderings, but it could also be really simple wonderings about the text or everyday wonderings about the text too. Then on the final reading, we talk about the things that we notice. And one of the things I noticed as I was creating this practice and looking at Mark chapter 10 on the rich young ruler,

was that we too often pay attention just to the line that Jesus says, go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. But we forget a couple of things. Jesus looks at this man hard in the eyes, what it says in the message version, and loved him. What does it mean that a God who loves us and loves this rich young ruler that we have so often vilified?

Jesus loved this man. How might we cultivate compassion for this man and what's going on here? And then how might we begin to ask the question, what might a God who loves us just as much have to say to us about our relationship with money? Because many of us, let's be honest, are asking a fairly similar question. Good teacher, what must I do? That's the question we have.

I also realized that we tend to cut off this text a little too soon. I really love the ending of it, and I'll read it out of the message paraphrase, which is just what we happen to use in this particular practice in the Faith and Money Beyond the Tithe course that you'll see in the Faith Lead Academy. You can, of course, look at it in different translations, but I love this one at the end. Jesus was blunt. No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world.

if you let God do it. What does it mean that those things that a loving God calls us to do, we aren't in them alone? In your money life and those things that are keeping you up at night, you aren't in it alone. God is in it with you. God not only sees it, God is working beside you. And in fact, God is even inviting us to relinquish some of that control and let God do it.

which I think is pretty incredible and powerful, especially for many of us, myself included, who would prefer to have all the control over our money life and not surrender it to anybody else.

That is a beautiful practice. And I just want to underscore a couple things. One is, I love how your approach to that text really begins with emphasizing love. Because so often I think the conversation around money is, for people, is often a shameful one, that they experience a sense of shame around it. So beginning with God's love. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about, ⁓ so if you think about shaping a community's life.

around spaces where those kinds of practices, which are very carefully facilitated, very carefully designed, but really are about turning over the story to the people, right, ⁓ in ways that they can engage, hopefully without shame, but with honesty and vulnerability. What have you learned about how to shape that within the life of a community? Where do these practices take place? Have you seen fruitfully, and what might leaders learn from that?

Most of the conversations that we tested out through the Faith and Money Learning Lab took place in small groups, and we tended to find that that was a really beautiful and delicate setting. A lot of people are going to feel way more comfortable, surprise, surprise, talking about money one-on-one, than they are going to feel in a larger group. So I do think starting in small group setting is great. I also think we had really good experiences with pre-made groups. So for instance, some of our participants used the church council.

Some used the church stewardship committee that already knew each other, already had a base of trust. There were some other congregations that decided to form an all new group of people who were designed to focus just on this. With those groups, we did notice they needed to go a little bit more slowly. So for instance, as you noticed, this was a multi-part practice. So I might encourage a new group to say, let's just start with the meditation and then give people time to reflect on it. Because I know when I did that meditation in a group a couple different times,

People said, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't jump into the text yet. I want to share what God's love smells like because it was such an interesting image, I just have to share it. Or I need to tell you about the crash of the ocean waves that I heard the last time I was on the Pacific coast and how that really encapsulated God's love for me. And so those different conversation breakpoints can allow to build trust. But the biggest thing that we have found is confidentiality matters. If you're going to get anywhere close to helping people talk about their lives with money, they have to know.

that what is said in that room stays in that room. If you cannot give people that bond of confidentiality, they won't move forward. And then one of the pieces I often stress with my students when we have conversations about money in the classroom and we brought into this activity as well, is the encouragement to have people be brave, that they're allowed to try on ideas and see if they fit. So for instance, with this Rich Young Ruler text, I don't know that I've got it all figured out, but as I try it on today,

This is what it's saying to me. And how does that feel in a community? Let's test that out together and ask good questions about it together so that people realize they don't have to have it perfect the first time. Because like you said, we're out of practice in talking about money. So we have to give ourselves permission to try, permission to be and listen.

love that and I think ⁓ practice is such an important word in this because ⁓ people are constantly being formed by messages about money, their own past, their own childhood, their experiences, the culture, advertising, all of those things are so strong. And so for us to just kind of recognize the formative power of all of those forces in people's lives and to say, how do we create space where people can behaviorally, experientially

wrestle with these things and actually try on different ways of behaving in their daily lives with some support for that and vulnerability and accountability, whatever that looks like. Share a bit about that side to it. Because again, I think what you're inviting us into is a journey of a deeper kind of transformation than simply trying to get people to think differently. It's actually something deeper.

I think that's so important. It needs to be able to transform our behavior. It's not valuable if we're just thinking different about money. And I think that tends to be the rub for people. We love to talk about how other people use their money, especially people in the news every day. That is a fun and interesting topic for us. And yet we're really hesitant to talk about our own financial lives, often because of our own money beliefs that can get in the way.

and guilt and shame that comes into the picture. I think it really does go back to, like you said, the practice idea and encouraging people to have a small thing that they take away, even if it's just one small step to practice. So for instance, one of our practices is around Luke 12, which is a text around worry and anxiety. And one of the things we invite people to do at the very end is to choose one phrase or word even from the passage that stood out to them.

that they can use as something to return back to when worries overwhelm them, almost kind of like a breath prayer, something that they can run back to and use as a prayer. And then on top of that, one action they can take. So the next time I'm worried, what will I try? Maybe I will try, to the best of my ability, getting out of the situation, going for a walk outside, and noticing those flowers that get talked about in the Luke 12 passage.

Or maybe my simple step is that I'm going to put on the phone screen, the lock screen on my phone, I'm going to put a picture of a raven so that I remember this passage because I know right now I'm drowning in money worries and all those apps on my phone are crying out to me for help and I need to see that raven. I don't think we should belittle those small steps because those small steps build our energy and build our muscles to take those larger actions where we might say, hey, I'm feeling called.

to save differently. I'm feeling called to align my spending with my values in a really radical way, but you don't get there right away. ⁓ Certainly there are beautiful Bible stories of immense transformation. I don't want to say that the spirit can't do it. It happens, but I think for many of us, it is a very slow journey of being able to unfold our story, trust the group, and know that we have accountability together to check in the next time and see how it went.

I love that. So you're a millennial, I'm an exer, our listeners may be from all different kinds of generations. What are you ⁓ seeing in terms of generational differences in this whole conversation about faith and money?

Honestly, younger generations just seem to be a bit more open at talking about money. And for many of them, the lens that they are used to using in talking about money publicly is social justice, which can in many ways be a positive and in some ways can get in the way of the conversation as we begin to talk again more about ideas and less about action. So I do think it's important to tie it to action. Honestly, for some of our older generations, money is just a bit more taboo.

For many of them, they grew up in households where money was not talked about at all, and they were actually told that talking about money was impolite. Certainly there are some millennials, Xers out there for whom that's the case too, but in my experience, that's becoming more and more rare. For those who have never been taught to talk about money, they often need a minute to realize that this is actually okay, that they're not crossing an inappropriate threshold in having this conversation.

And some of what may need to happen with them is they need space to just participate and listen. To find people that they trust to process their story with at their own pace, which is one of the biggest things that we've found. People need to have their own pace in sharing the conversation. But especially for those folks for whom money has been barred off, that's a big piece of the puzzle. Occasionally, the other concern that comes up, and this is somewhat generational, but not completely,

is the idea that my money life is between me and God. I don't have to talk with any of you about it. And while I'm really grateful and hopeful that if somebody says that they are actually bringing their money life to God, in my experience when people say that, it's a bar that is used to shut down the conversation because they don't want anyone else to know about their life with money. It actually doesn't usually have much to do with their relationship with God. So I would say if you experience that pushback, you might invite people.

as they are able and willing to participate in some of these activities and just to listen, to reflect. Because for most people that also shade some trauma, maybe they had an experience in the past where somebody went around sharing with people how much they gave and they were nervous to share that again. Helping people begin to unpack that story is so important. And I would say for the pastoral leader in the room, your best role in this conversation is to watch for pastoral care moments.

Because I'm shocked, when you bring up the topic of money, all of the other stuff comes up too. So you will have probably a lot of pastoral care appointments after doing this. And I think that's a good thing, because you're going to be opening up new avenues for conversation.

I love that. Really what you're describing, a kind of approach to ministry, engaging the whole person. And I think in ways that sometimes churches have not always done. I think one of the reasons, I think why Withno's observation is so salient is that I think a lot of people who aren't Christian are looking for spaces in which to really make meaning of their lives. And if they feel like the church is a space where they can't really show up.

in any kind of authentic or honest way, then they know that it's not gonna go deep enough to really touch those deep earrings that they have. So as we wrap up this conversation, just tell us just a bit briefly about this Faithlead Academy course Beyond the Tithe. Is that for congregations to use or individuals or say a little bit more about what's in that course and how it works?

We've really designed it for both audiences to use. We designed the course that an individual could work through this on their own. So if you happen to be a part of a congregation and you want to test out the content in advance, or you're so interested in it, you want to jump in right away before you've got a partner, don't worry. We have set it up so you can do that. But as I mentioned, I think the richest way to do this is to do this in community, which is why we have a really robust leader guide for this.

that walks you through how to do this in relationship in a congregation. We have, I believe it's eight modules where we walk you through a variety of different practices and scripture. You will engage all of your senses. We have different videos of prayers. We also have meditations like the ones you experienced. We have interactive activities that are really designed to engage your brain in different ways so that hopefully after you leave the course,

those ideas begin to pop up in your everyday life as you're spending money, as you're saving money, you're beginning to see how that integration emerges. But I just want to say that this particular course is one starting point. We are so excited to see how this conversation grows, that this course is designed to get you in, but you're going to take it even further as you begin to deeply engage with this group and hold one another accountable to those things that God is calling you to do.

Grace, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us on the Pivot podcast today around these really, you know, I think challenging but really important questions of faith and money.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

You can find Grace's course on Luther Seminary's Faithlead platform at faithlead.org. And of course, to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like or subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on whatever podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend. See you next week.