Stewardship as Love in Action: Grace Duddy Pomroy’s Journey of Generous Living

In this episode of You Can’t Take it With You, Jim Dunlop and Grace Duddy Pomroy, Director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary, discuss the essence of stewardship as a form of love. They explore the impact of personal generosity stories, the challenges and solutions in managing finances ethically, and how stewardship can serve as a bridge between personal values and societal benefit.

The podcast comes out weekly, so make sure you head on over to https://canttakeitwithyou.com/ or your favorite podcast platform to listen!

Grace Duddy Pomroy is the Director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary, an institution focused on educating leaders for Christian communities. She is recognized for her expertise in stewardship and financial education. Based in Allen, Washington, she is a noted speaker and author, contributing significantly to her field with works such as Embracing Stewardship and Stewards of God’s Love. Grace is currently developing a book on alternative financial models for ministry with Fortress Press, which shows her dedication to updating financial practices in religious settings.

Episode Summary:

Is it possible to weave stewardship seamlessly into everyday life while profoundly impacting others? How do people embody the values they advocate through their financial decisions and interactions with others?

According to Grace Duddy Pomroy, a renowned financial educator and stewardship leader, integrating generosity into one’s lifestyle involves much more than occasional acts of giving. She emphasizes the importance of aligning spending with values and the transformative power of purposeful financial education. Grace highlights the significance of discussing money openly within relationships and the broader implications of our financial decisions on community welfare and environmental sustainability. These practices not only improve personal and financial health but also create a legacy of generosity that impacts both local communities and society at large.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Advent Partners — a financial planning partner dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. 

Our seasoned team is committed to guiding you toward your financial goals. We offer tailored solutions based on your specific needs, from standalone financial planning to integrated financial management.

Whether you are planning for the future, investing for growth, or navigating financial hurdles, Advent Partners is here to provide insights, recommendations, and a clear financial roadmap.

To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit AdventPartnersFP.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the You Can’t Take it With You show where we feature stories around generosity designed to inspire and encourage others to do meaningful things in their communities. Now, here’s your host, Jim Dunlop.

Jim Dunlop 0:17

Hi. Jim Dunlop here, a wealth advisor and host of the show where I sit down with people who get it when it comes to generosity. I’m excited to have guests who can give us stories on generosity to not only inspire listeners, but to give practical ideas on ways we can give. Today’s guest is Grace Duddy Pomroy. But before we get to Grace, I want to share that this episode is brought to you by Advent Partners, get ready for good. Advent is a financial planning team dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. Advent’s seasoned team of professionals is committed to guiding you toward your financial goals. We offer tailored solutions based on your specific needs. From standalone financial planning to integrated financial management, we help our clients get ready for good whether you are planning for the future, investing for growth, or navigating financial hurdles. Advent Partners is here to provide insights, recommendations, and a clear financial roadmap. To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit readyforgood.com. Now before we get to today’s guest, I want to give a big thank you to previous guests, Angela Zimman and her husband Marty for connecting us with Grace. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to my conversation with Angela, please check it out at canttaketitwithtyou.com. It’s episode number five. Grace Duddy Pomroy is the Director of Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary. She’s a lay millennial stewardship leader, speaker, and financial educator based in Allen Washington. She is the co-author of the stewardship book Embracing Stewardship: How to Put Stewardship at the Heart of Your Congregation’s Life, as well as author of the 2013 ELCA stewardship resource Stewards of God’s Love. She is currently working on a book about alternative financial models for ministry with Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. Grace, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 2:07

I’m so grateful to be here to thank you so much for inviting me.

Jim Dunlop 2:12

So I have, I’m kind of excited to talk to you today. And as I’ve gotten to know you and done some research, I think you’re going to have some neat stuff to share today. Before we get to all that though, would you mind giving us a little bit of a couple minute autobiography of you and how you got to Allen, Washington from and where you started.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 2:33

For sure. So I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and I grew up with some buddies of God, I’m now hanging out with the Lutherans. But that’s the church that I started in, and generosity was baked into that experience from the beginning. One of my first memories of being in church was the tithes and offerings being collected. And while we never ever said the word stewardship, that was never a part of it. We talked about generosity all the time, I was grateful to have both sets of grandparents involved in my life, in addition to two very generous parents. And I ended up moving to Minnesota to go to college, went to study religion, but my dad told me that I should have a more practical degree in my back pocket. So I also added math to the mix. So studied math and religion and wondered What on earth am I going to end up doing with this, which is what led me to Luther Seminary and led me to stewardship ministry.

Jim Dunlop 3:25

Oh, very good. And, and so. And now you’re living out on the West Coast outside of Seattle? Correct.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 3:34

We definitely are. My husband had always dreamed of moving to the West Coast. And during the pandemic, we realized pretty quickly that we could wait forever until we were retired to make this dream a reality. Or we could start living into this now. And my husband and I both enjoy working remotely. And so we thought let’s, let’s see if we can make this happen. And so while we started dreaming about this in 2020, and even before we finally made the move in fall of 2022. And it’s been an amazing experience. We now live on the Olympic Peninsula, which is kind of the finger of Washington if you’re not familiar with it, right near Olympic National Park, immense opportunities for hiking or seeing mountains and oceans. So just experiencing God’s creation, a new and a new part of the country.

Jim Dunlop 4:19

That sounds exciting. Having just been out there last summer for the first time. I know what a beautiful area that is. So we got a little of your background. I think that probably is a good prelude to tell me about your own idea around generosity or maybe more importantly, what’s your generosity origin story.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 4:39

Generosity, like I said, was just baked in from the beginning. And the tradition that I grew up in. It was something that was talked about all the time in sermons it was talked about in Bible studies, but it was also modeled very much so in my family in a variety of different ways. My grandparents were incredibly generous people. Generous in just about every way, generous to organizations they cared about, but also generous to their family and friends. They were the first to reach out to help when someone needed help. And my dad was also incredibly generous and my mom as well. But one of my favorite stories from growing up, is that during middle school, my dad sat my brother and I down and said that they would be giving a generous gift to buy a projector for our youth room that had just recently been built. And he told my brother and I, and he said, I want you to keep this to yourself, because this is designed to be an anonymous gift. And sorry, Dad, I’ve told this story enough now that it’s probably no longer anonymous. But still, in theory, at that time, it was an anonymous gift. And it was interesting to see when we went to youth service, the next Wednesday, the person whose parents were giving the projector screen was a different couple. And they were the people that you expected, they had a lot of money, and their kids were running around saying our parents are giving the screen our parents were giving the screen. But my brother and I couldn’t say anything. Because my dad had asked it to be an anonymous gift. He’s always very much been into anonymous giving. And we were not the people you would expect. We grew up in a middle-class family. And at that time, in my family’s life, we were actually struggling a bit financially because my dad was between jobs. And so to see us be able to step forward and generosity in the midst of that moment, was really incredible for my brother and I to see. But it’s also been an amazing reminder to me that often the most generous people are not the ones that you expect.

Jim Dunlop 6:33

Absolutely. And I think there’s obviously some biblical stories that illustrate that pretty well. So thinking about your family a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your great aunt Dorothy and her impact on you.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 6:50

My great aunt Dorothy is probably one of my biggest generosity impacts on my life. So my great aunt Dorothy was my dad’s aunt. So she’s kind of my great aunt, or however you want to phrase it, she lived out in Vermont. And I don’t recall ever having the chance to meet her until I was in eighth grade. She had reached out to my parents after the passing of her sister, my other great aunt Neil, and my great aunt Dorothy didn’t have any kids. But she would always, you know, do the great aunt stuff of sending us, you know, cards on birthdays and Christmas and giving us money. And so we just really knew her by that she was kind of someone who lived in the post office box, that was nothing else. And yet, there was so much more. So she reached out to my family and said, You know, I plan to include you, my mom and my dad and the kids in my will. But I would like to do more. And I would really like to take your family on a trip. And we started out with just one trip. She had gone to Bermuda at one point in her life and really enjoyed it. And she wanted to take us now set the stage at this time in my family’s life. Again, in middle school, we had been struggling a bit financially for a variety of reasons. And our only trips were to go see family, we haven’t really been on a plane to go overseas for sure. And so this was something really out of the ordinary. But the reason why she wanted to do this is because she wanted to have a relationship with us. She didn’t want to just give us money at the end of her life and be somebody who just lived on in letters, she wanted to be a real person. And we got to know her through these trips, we had a wonderful first trip and decided to continue going on these trips for I believe, about 11 years. So every single year, we would go on vacation with her. And we got to know her, I got to know this amazing at that time in her life single woman who was incredibly generous with the organizations in her community, incredibly generous with the people at her church, and also really generous with us and showed me that generosity can come in the form of giving money away. But that there are also creative ways to do that. Taking a family on a trip every year one of the only trips where our family could really rest and relax throughout the entire year, just made a broader impact on our well-being and gave us an opportunity to get to know her as a person.

Jim Dunlop 9:10

Well, I think it’s really neat and you think about where you are professionally, and you spent a lot of time thinking and talking and educating in this space. And so what an incredible impact and ripple effect that your aunt had by doing this for you and has I’m sure in some way influenced your work today. So that’s a pretty remarkable legacy for her that that must still live on pretty nicely.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 9:36

It really does. And it not only influences my work today, but I think it influences the way that I live my life; my husband and I are child free by choice, similar to her. And it’s been fun for us to begin living into our anti role as I look around my office like the pictures on my wall are pictures from my niece and nephew that they drew for me and so we are constantly thinking about how can we show up as amazing adult figures in their lives that aren’t their parents, how can we be present for them and give them opportunities that their parents may not be able to give them?

Jim Dunlop 10:10

So I think that that’s I think this is pretty cool. And just to hear the ways that she’s that your Aunt Dorothy, your great aunt Dorothy has influenced you. That’s really exciting. I want to come a little further into your professional work. And would you mind talking about your work with the faith lead stewardship Leaders program?

Grace Duddy Pomroy 10:31

For sure, so the faith lead site, if you’re not familiar with it, I encourage you to check it out. We are here to create theological resources, training and courses to help you dive deeper into your relationship with Jesus. But really in the midst of all that’s going on in the church today, to say that we do believe that God is at work, and God is creating a faithful future for the church today. And we want to equip you to join what God is up to. So that’s what we’re doing. We hope that you will check us out there. It’s a privilege to be a part of that team as part of Luther Seminary. My role spans three different areas, I have the opportunity to teach at the seminary to teach courses on stewardship and generosity. I also have the opportunity to work with congregations through faith leaders to think about how they can create a more sustainable future. And I also get to have financial education conversations with our students, which is a delight. One of the main ways that I learned about financial wellness was through seminary, I came to seminary right out of college, I had no idea what stewardship was, I knew about generosity. But I had no idea what a budget was or how to handle my money. And I heard that they had financial coaches available at seminary, and I thought, why not take advantage of that. And having relationships with two different financial coaches throughout my two-year seminary experience, completely changed my life, it changed my career trajectory. And it shaped my faith in really profound ways.

Jim Dunlop 12:00

So I know that one of your roles and hats that you wear is this idea of leading financial education conversations. And I know that you’ve done some blogging and really practical advice for couples talking about money and values. Could you share a little bit more around your thoughts of generosity and building that into your conversation? I think the phrase that probably you want to share with us is something around generosity being a live conversation. So tell us a little bit about that.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 12:30

So a couple of years ago, my husband and I started this practice of doing money dates together, we found that money was causing some conflict in our relationship, which yes, that can happen. Even if one of your partners is in the financial education space, I naively assumed when I got married, that being a financial wellness person, that we would have no issues with money in our marriage. And that’s just ridiculous and not possible. So we started having money dates, every month, we call it budget breakfast, we go together and go out to eat, because my husband really likes to get out of the house to have these conversations. So there are no distractions around us. I think it’s a brilliant idea. And one of the things we’re consistently talking about is generosity. My husband is not a person of faith. So when it comes to having conversations about this, we’re often on different ends of the table. And especially as someone who’s constantly teaching about stewardship, I tend to be really intentional to say, how do I live into these values of mine with integrity, while also making sure that my husband who equally has access to this money because we have joint accounts, is also living into his values in this. So we’ve had to be really, really creative. And we’ve had to get down to the bare bones of what are our values? What do we care about, and which organizations are expressing those. So for instance, there have been times where congregations have had specific projects that connected with my husband’s values where we have chosen to give more to the church. And other times we’ve said, you know, that’s a great project, and maybe Grace, you can give some money out of your speaking or other earnings that you have coming in, maybe not out of our regular budget to that project, but it’s not a match for Tyler’s values. So how do we take a step back and say, Where do we best reflect where we both are coming from? And I will admit, this was really hard for me, I grew up with a pretty ingrained mindset, if you get 10% of the church, this is how this works. And you want to give a little bit more to other organizations. That’s fine. That was the philosophy I heard growing up. And I’ve really shifted my mindset to say what does it mean to be more generous at a top level and then decide which organizations to be able to give that to that reflect the values and needs of this particular moment?

Jim Dunlop 14:44

I really liked that and I just I liked the evolution for you and your acknowledgment of that. Just you know, hey, I grew up with this kind of very set structure and thought and how do I still live into that and do it on a values bases and find organizations that really speak to you and, and the work that the practical work that they’re doing that you can support. Grace, do you have any other stories or ideas for our listeners that that might be inspiring to them as they think about their own generosity journey?

Grace Duddy Pomroy 15:18

What are the biggest things that inspired my generosity journey is getting outside of a more transactional view of generosity. Like I said, I think for so long, I assumed that the only way to be generous was to give money to organizations. And that’s something that is so easy for me to do, as I think about my own money. Personality giving is just something that was ingrained in me early on, it doesn’t take much for me to give money away. And I know for others that’s more challenging, they have other financial gifts. That being said, I’ve really become to think about this more comprehensively. And my husband’s been a big influence on this with me as well, to say, if we really care about the environment, we can’t just be giving money to environmental charities, we also have to look at how we’re spending our money, are we buying things that last and not just buying the cheapest things, are we investing in small businesses that have good financial practices, not just brainwashing, with beautiful marketing, but actually living into it. And one of the biggest ways that I have found to live into this for myself is actually impact investing, having the opportunity to invest my finances and align with my values. And then also to go even deeper to make positive social impact, even though I may be getting a little bit less of a return. And I realized, it’s easier to say, given my age, I’m in my 30s. However, it has been a profound way for me to make an impact and align with my values in with more money than I will probably ever give away in my lifetime, especially because that money continues to be reinvested. And once I realized that kind of magnified impact, I really woke up to say there are way more ways than being generous than just giving money away.

Jim Dunlop 17:01

Yeah, but I really liked that idea. And I really appreciate your sharing that perspective, because I think it is getting away from that idea of, as you said, Get outside that that that idea of a transaction and more how do we how do we live in a way that’s consistent with those values, and invest and utilize our resources and our money in that way? So I really appreciate that. I do as we as we get towards the end of this conversation. I do have a few things that I want to share. But before I do that, was there anything else that you wanted to make sure our listeners heard today that you know that that we can that’s useful and helpful for them?

Grace Duddy Pomroy 17:44

One of the things that also came to mind for me around kind of expanding this conversation around generosity is something I’ve worked with my students a lot on, which is negotiating salary and benefits, which you might say, what does that have to do with generosity, I’m just not sure. But one of the things I realized early on in my life was because I am a more generous person. That’s where my inclination lies. I never negotiated my own salary and benefits in my career, because I always thought whatever the employer gives me is enough. And I will give away as much of that as I can. That’s my personality, I just need to assume that everyone else has goodwill going into this conversation. That being said, I had a pretty big wakeup call midway through my career when a manager told me that I was being vastly underpaid in comparison to my peers, and actually did the work for me of making sure that my salary was increased. But after that experience, I realized that negotiating my own salary and benefits matters, not just for me, but for those who come after me. And that every time I don’t take that step to make sure that I’m being paid equitably. I’m setting the tone for the next person. And I see this happen a lot, particularly in the church space, where pastors think that they are doing their congregation a favor by being paid less, but they’re actually not doing the person who comes after them a favor at all. So another great way to be generous is actually to take that step forward yourself. And the good news is if you receive more than you need, there are plenty of ways for you to be able to give that away. But imagine if the person comes after you has to do that extra work to be able to lift themselves up, you’re putting additional pressure on them. And that can be one way of being generous to people you’ll never even have a chance to meet.

Jim Dunlop 19:26

That was not what I was expecting. And that is great to hear. I think that’s I think that’s really important to hear. We think about it a lot. I know in my church, what’s the precedent of paying somebody that works in our congregation, and how do we do that equitably? How do we make sure we pay them enough they can afford a house in this community so they can be truly part of the community. And certainly as an employer, in our team, my business partner, I have very similar conversations because this is really important to us. So I really appreciate you sharing that and incur urging people to think that strategically in that way, not only for themselves, but those who follow them. So I do have one final question. But before I ask it, I do want to point people to your website, which is faith lead.org/stewardship. If you want to connect with Grace, or some of the resources that she has to offer, that’s a great place to start. So Grace, thank you so much for being with us. And as we wrap up, the last question I have is if you could share some advice, or wisdom on a billboard, where someplace where you’re going to reach a lot of people, what would your message be?

Grace Duddy Pomroy 20:36

This is so hard. And I’ve had a chance to think about it. And it’s still difficult. But I think the thing that I would share, and if I can reframe the question to know that it was just some more churchy people seeing this billboard, I would like to share two billboards. One is that stewardship is love in action. Because I think stewardship has a bad name, as someone just told me on a call the other day and their particular area, they’re working in stewardship is known as a four-letter word. And I think that’s okay, because love is also a four-letter word too. And I think living out our love of God and neighbor, there’s no better way to do that than through the lens of stewardship. And the other thing that I would point to, is that I guess, things are hard too right now, but God is at work. I do believe God is at work in our churches today. And while it may feel like things are crumbling, and our churches are dying, I do know that the gospel is still alive and well. And sharing that through the voice of a millennial I think would be powerful for many people.

Jim Dunlop 21:40

Gotcha. Well, we’ve been talking to Grace Duddy Pomroy, truly a thought leader when it comes to generosity and stewardship, and you can find her at faithead.org/stewardship. Thank you so much grace for joining us.

Grace Duddy Pomroy 21:55

Thank you.

Outro 21:57

Thanks for joining us to hear stories of generosity that remind us that you can’t take it with you. Visit our site at canttakeitwithyou.com for more details on today’s episode, and to subscribe to future shows.

Disclosure 22:15

Advent Partners may utilize third-party websites, including social media websites, blogs, and other interactive content. We consider all interactions with clients, prospective clients, and the general public on these sites to be advertisements under the securities regulations. As such, we generally retain copies of information that we or third parties may contribute to such sites. This information is subject to review and inspection by Thrivent Advisor Network or the securities regulators. Advisory Persons of Thrivent provide advisory services under a “doing business as” name or may have their own legal business entities. However, advisory services are engaged exclusively through Thrivent Advisor Network, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Advent Partners and Thrivent Advisor Network, LLC are not affiliated companies.

\