Conquering money shame to reshape your stewardship mindset

Stewardship Kaleidoscope workshop identifies rising up and starting over as a blessing

by John C. Williams for the Presbyterian Foundation | Special to Presbyterian News Service

Katherine Lankford

Teaching how to budget, save, eliminate debt and start investing should become essential life skills, Katherine Lankford says. Don’t wait until you are 30, 40, 50 or 60 years old to learn hard lessons. Instead, look at the experience and the mistakes of others and take charge of your financial habits now.

“There are studies that say children start forming their opinions about money as early as age four,” she said. “As leaders, it is important for us to get to a point of self-awareness in our own lives.”

Lankford, a presenter at Stewardship Kaleidoscope 2024 in Portland, Oregon, is an associate pastor of Christian education and community engagement at Liberty Community Church in Minneapolis. She also brings 20-plus years of experience in financial management and mortgages.

She described her session as “a holistic journey to explore the concept of money shame, understand its roots in personal and church experiences, and recognize how it impacts giving within the congregation. The session will help participants reshape their money mindsets using biblical principles and practical tools which will lead to a celebration of growth and empowerment.”

Participants shared their childhood “money messages” — including one man who said that he grew up in a pastor’s home where he had to tithe his birthday and Christmas money as an early lesson in sharing.

Another shared his revelation as a young man that giving more than 10% was acceptable — he had been hardwired to think that a simple tithe “checked the box and God was happy.” Giving more became a joyful opportunity for him.

A key takeaway: Be grateful for what you have, rather than worry about what you lack. She said she takes joy in being able to pay her bills, rather than doing it in a grudging way.

To Lankford, one of her biggest “money shames” happened in the early 2000s when mortgage rates were low. She was buying up residential properties — until the market crash.

“I was devastated. Not only did I have to lose some houses, but the biggest impact that it had on me was internally. I was ashamed,” she said. She told herself, “You were the money person, you were the one who was supposed to know better. I carried that shame with me for a while … I had to close my business down and I had to file for bankruptcy. I felt guilt and shame for months and months.”

Many of us were never taught financial literacy when we were younger. Lankford said we’ve all seen and experienced how money mistakes have contributed to entire generations’ poor quality of life.

“Another money lesson that was living in my body was a trauma that I didn’t realize was there until years and years later,” she said. “I was in college, I was living at home, my mom and dad were divorced, and she had bought her first house.

“So, one night around 2 in the morning … my mom was weeping. It wasn’t like she was trying to cover it,” she said. As she learned a few days later, her mom had lost the job she loved.  “She was getting older, and she had gotten laid off from that job. In her mind, she was getting older, and people didn’t really hire people who were getting older,” Lankford said.

The weeping came because her mom had miscalculated how long she would get unemployment, and she didn’t know how she would be able to pay her bills.

Lankford said that memory, and her own missteps, serve as reminders that there will be poor decisions in life — but rising up and starting over is the blessing.