Louie Giglio - A Conversation with Allison Dukes
Above and Beyond Sunday is not about money. It's about the opportunity we have to step into the miracle story of God. And I'm confident that we're gonna see the miracle story of God continue to unfold. It's just a question of whether or not we are gonna be a part of God's miracle story for us. And I believe we get into God's miracle story by trusting Him and believing Him. And so, I've asked a friend to come, and I'll say a little more about her, but I've asked Allison Dukes who serves on our financial oversight team at Passion City Church and is a business leader in our city, to come and share with me today. So, you guys, welcome Allison Dukes as she comes and joins me this morning.
— Welcome, thanks so much for being a part this morning. It's awesome to have you.
— So glad to be here. Sorry. Mic problem.
— Mic problems. They happen all the time. Trust me. Alison is as I mentioned already a part of the team that stewards our giving at Passion City Church, looks over our budget, helps make big decisions we make like, are we gonna go down to Trilith and rent this production studio, and invest the money it takes to turn it into something that feels like a gathering spot? And she's a part of the team who serves in that capacity but she's also a mom, has an amazing family. She's from Atlanta, has a track record in banking in our city. Was a CFO of a very well-known bank in Atlanta and currently is the CFO of a global asset management firm looking after lots of people's money. And so, welcome...
— Thank you.
— Today, and thanks for being willing to share with us today. I'm pumped.
— I am too. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
— I'm interested to know Allison, how... you live in this macro financial world and I'm guessing you watch the markets all day and understand what's happening globally. Overnight something happen, you need to know about it when you wake up in the morning. And then, as soon as you're going to sleep, you need to already be kinda ahead of the curve for the next day. How has your understanding of the macro picture of finance in the world informed your view of the kingdom finance of God and how has your understanding of the kingdom finance of God informed your view of the macro finance...
— Yeah.
— The real finance in the world?
— Yeah. When I started out, I definitely felt like the macro economy was it and really through, I would say, the 2008 financial crisis was where, it was a turning point for me in a lot of different ways. I mean, it was impactful. I'm not sure how much people realize we were truly on the brink, but we were on the brink as an economy. And I started to see how I... I always think of it as the blood in the circulatory system. I mean, the financial economy is blood in the circulatory system not just in the United States but in the global economy, and when it stops flowing, the body seizes up, and that was sort of what 2008 was. We got right there. Without intervention, it would have been rather disastrous. And it felt so big and so heavy, and I would come home at night thinking, "The world's about to end," and it wouldn't. And you know, you wake up the next morning, you're like, the sun still came up. I mean, God's got this. Like, you know? And a had a small baby at the time too and it was like, "This is not everything". And it started through that time I would say was when my own sort of thought process, I mean, I was a believer going into that but coming through it, started to really put it in context that the macro economy is really a subset of the kingdom economy. I used to think of it as the other way around. There's macroeconomic. There's the circulatory system. We make money flow, and you know, there are lots of powerful people, not just in this country but throughout the world. And we really bring money to all the places that need it. And the kingdom economy is a subset of that. That's church. And through that time period, I started to see it completely upside down. The kingdom economy, we're all just, the macro economy is just a subset of God's economy.
— Great.
— We just fit into that. It's true. It's truth. But it does take a moment when you live in the world of finance and you see a lot of people who, you know, everybody thinks they're a God in some way. I think in this big, sort of, you know, financial economy, that they're making it happen, but we're not. We're playing a small, little role in the kingdom economy and there's a lot a good that can come from that too.
— You know, right now, everything is a headline of doom. Seems like you have to scroll a long way through your news feed to find anything inspiring. Everything's negative and now it's the economy, inflation, the markets are down, most people's portfolios are down 20, 30%, crypto's in the tank, and you know, gonna be crypto-winter for a while maybe. And everything you see, gas prices, employment numbers...
— Food, all of it.
— Interest rates are going up and it's just fear, fear, fear, fear everywhere. I'm not asking for personal financial advice and we're not asking for personal financial advice...
— Yeah. Hard.
— But what should our posture be when every single financial headline is about gloom and doom?
— Yeah. Look, first of all, headlines are created to actually get our interest, so we have to kinda remember, put all that in context just like everything else that you read about. We're all looking for headlines these days. And I will say, it's confusing. I mean, it is, like, are we in a recession or we not in a recession? How can we be adding jobs but also in a recession? And this whole inflation area impact is real and we all feel it, and it is confusing. And you could get really fearful because it feels uncharted, and it is. We are in a bit of a different environment than we've ever been in, but we weren't designed to be fearful. And this is not the whole story. The headlines are not the whole story. I was in Psalm 3 earlier this week and the verse that, "I lie down and I got to sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me". And just that reminder...
— Beautiful.
— That He sustains us and that His mercies are new every morning and the idea that too, I lie down, I wake again not because I did anything but because the Lord sustains me. And really putting the headlines in that context too that He sustains us through this. This is yet a small blip in really the bigger story He has for us and the role we play in it.
— I think a lot of people look at you and they're like, "Oh, okay, you," you know, they probably categorize you pretty quickly and size you up. You're the CFO of this global asset management firm and okay, that's one kind of person. But I love, you said it pretty quickly, but you grew up with a single working mom...
— For a few years, yep.
— Trying to make ends meet until your mom remarried. And, so you've been on a long journey, and I wonder if you could just give us maybe a few of the broad strokes of your journey of generosity and how generosity has come to be a central value for you, and for Billy, for your family.
— Yeah. Well, and even when my mom remarried, it was still, we were still making ends meet month to month there for a long time, and did see, again, that value of just hard work and really prioritizing what was important as a family. And I saw, I saw generosity in secret more when I was growing up, and I think there was a bit of a value of doing that in secret. I've evolved in my own sort of view on that and what that looks like, and I'd say Billy and I both feel like it's... yes, there are some things we want to do in secret but we wanna live our lives in such a way where it's just very obvious that that's, we're giving our whole lives away. I don't want that to be a secret. I want it to be very clear that we're giving our whole lives away. And I had shared with Pastor Louie recently that I had reflected on something I found in my desk when I was leaving the bank a few years ago when the bank was heading to a different city and we chose to stay here, and I pulled something out of my desk, a piece of paper that I'd put in my desk when I started in 1997, which by the way we had email that only worked on the floor. So, on like the fourth floor, I could email people in the cubicle, you know, 10 cubicles down, but I couldn't actually email anyone to the fifth floor, or the third floor or anywhere else, so... My kids now call it "the 1900s". So, when I started in the 1900s when email only went to the floor, I put this note in my desk. It moved around, desk to desk to desk, and it just stayed in this file for a long time. But I wrote down, "Give more than you get. Leave more than you take". And it really, I don't know why that was on my heart at a rather, you know, young, early stage but it was. The idea that I'm here to give more than I'm going to receive. Going to receive a paycheck. That's sort of the social contract we have here. That I'll work, you'll pay me. But I'm gonna give me more than I get, and I wanna leave more than I take. And I had an idea that I was here to make the organization better than I found it. I didn't create it. I'm just passing through it and I had an opportunity to steward whatever was given to me to steward. And that actually I think has really sort of defined how I think about all of what I do. I'm here to make whatever I touch a little bit better than I found it. If I could steward it and just leave something more than it gives me, then job well done. And I think about that not just with my work... Certainly, the role in the finance oversight team, really everything we do we have this opportunity to give just a little more than we're receiving and to leave everything just a little better than we find it.
— Well, as two people who have both journeyed through the 1900s, I feel like I wanna take just a little side note for a second because I think that value might be waning a little bit now as we're coming into this new era of someone showing up at their job and putting a note in the drawer that says, "I wanna leave this place better than I found it". I think people, a lot of people now are coming to job's going, "I'm gonna be here as long as you make me better but as soon as I feel like there's somebody else who can make me better than you can make me better, then I'm gonna go over there with those people," versus, "When I walk out of this place, I wanna make sure that I have left it better than I found it". I was so moved by that, I wrote it down, what you said. You said, "I want to give more than I get and I wanna leave more than I take". That's a whole life mindset right there, not just a financial generosity mindset.
— Yeah, yeah. It is, well, you know, we're not here to take. I think we're reminded in 1 Corinthians, "What do you have that you did not receive"? Nothing. I have nothing that I didn't receive. It was all given to me already. I'm not here to take more. I'm here to continue to return and to bless others, and I think everything we do, all of our interactions, everyone we touch during the day, every drive-thru, every store we enter, we have an opportunity just to leave something, to give somebody something. I agree it's not really the mindset we're surrounded by increasingly but that doesn't have to be the case. We have the opportunity to change that. We have the opportunity to make everything we touch just a little bit better. And it's a lot of what we are spending a lot of time as a family thinking about. How do we as a family do that in a way that we use the gifts that are given to us? You have talked in the past and I've always loved it, that you remind us that work is a form of worship. It is using the gifts that God has bestowed us to actually return them to Him in some way. We're all gifted in different ways. We all have something to share, and the way in which we can use that as a form of worship to say, "Lord, there's nothing I have that I didn't receive from You. Absolutely nothing. So, how can I use these gifts that You have so generously bestowed upon me to return them back to You"? In Isaiah, we're reminded that He formed us in the womb to be His servant. He didn't form us in the womb to come and take as much as we can from this world, and take as much as we can from each other. He formed us to be His servant and to serve with all the gifts in which He's given us.
— So powerful. Your family's obviously woven into the life of our house, and I've heard you talk about the community of Passion City Church, but you also see the whole story. You see the books, and you see what people give, and you see how we spend that money, and steward that money, and I just would love for you to talk a little bit about Passion City Church from your point of view. People already know my point of view. But talk a bit about the house, both the community of it and what you see of our house from serving on the financial oversight team.
— Yeah. We love this community. We really do. And I love, I have to say, it's my first time to Trilith and I love that it's a community here and we started out at 515. We kinda bounced between 515 and Cumberland now because I have two teenagers who wanna be here, there, and everywhere with all their friends. But it's a community, a community of people who come alongside each other. From the very first time we walked in the doors, we felt that. People came alongside us that very first Sunday and said, "Here's where you go for Bloom and here's where you go for Passion Kids," and you know, we started to see some familiar faces and we decided, we're gonna lean in and we did. We leaned in and kids really help with that too. Our kids created their own their own communities and they really do have their own community here at Passion after all these years. But we get the opportunity then to really come alongside and see all the ways in which we serve the city, and I think that's one of the things that Billy and I love the most, you know. As a house, we are for God, for people, for our city, and for the world. And I really love those four pillars and the fact that we do have an opportunity to really remind ourselves in the way in which we worship, at the way in which we give, and that we are not just for God and for people, which by the way would be enough. It would be enough. But we're also for the city and for the world. And you know, I do think... Let me come back on the finance side. Let me say part of what's really neat about what we do, and for those of you that haven't been at Passion for a long time or it's your first Above and Beyond season, we actually, Above and Beyond does not go towards the operating budget for the church. The operating budget is sustained through the weekly giving. Above and Beyond is really, truly about the opportunity we have to really go beyond. Trilith being the beyond that's so tangible sitting here. But also, the ways in which we can go beyond and bless so many partner agencies. So, from a financial oversight perspective, it's in a lot ways, it's really easy, it's really fun, 'cause the team is fantastic. You have an outstanding leadership team and it's a really well-run organization. So, that makes it easy. But everything we do is prayed over. I mean, we pray together as a financial oversight team every three weeks. We get on a zoom call from our various offices early in the morning, on Thursday morning, and we pray together. We pray over gifts. We pray over the budget. We pray over every decision. You are very thoughtful, I think, as a team, about seeking counsel and wisdom from each other but also from business leaders, from people that are in real estate, and finance, and who can offer some perspective and no one's afraid to change their mind and really wait and be patient and wait on the Lord to show us what the next direction is. It is, it's really an example of how a lot of organizations should work frankly. But yes, it's a community and as a community, you invite the community in, parts of the community to say, "How can we make sure that we really are stewarding what God has given us"?
— Yeah. I love that you touched on that idea that Above and Beyond really is above beyond. For a few years... And you know, it seems like Passion City Church has been around forever but on a week-to-week schedule with the kids' Ministry and a place you can drop your baby, we're really about ten years old as a church. And people think, "Man, Passion's been around forever". it's like, we're kind of just coming into our adolescence really as a church and for the first few Generosity Sundays, that's what Above and Beyond used to be called, we did take the generosity Sunday giving and use it for operational cost 'cause we had to.
— We had to. Yeah.
— But we were very disciplined in our budgeting and our expenses, so that we could get to the point where Above and Beyond is truly above and beyond. And I'm gonna put up, I think we have a slide of some of the partners that we wanna support this year. The ones in black on the bottom are DC partners and the ones above are either global partners or partners here in the city. And Allison, I want you to look through the list and just pick out one and talk about which one you wanna talk about.
— Oh, I don't know if I can talk about just one, but I'll try.
— Or two.
— Okay. So, what I love about this list is when I come back to, we're for God, for people, for the city, for the world, you see it all up here. For people, you may not see but you should know we support people in this house. I mean, we have been hearing stories over this past week of when we have stepped in to support some of the people in our house who have had a hard time and have lost jobs, and are having a hard time making their mortgage payments. I mean, this is a house that quietly steps in and takes care of each other. But here, you can see a list of where we're for the city and for the world. I'll talk about, I mean, Beloved Benefit. That's a great organization that's really moving into the west side and I'm really thinking about all the different organizations and really kind of a pass-through entity, in a lot of ways supporting a lot of the agencies on the west side that are working in some of the most challenged parts of our city in Atlanta. What I love too though is, where is it, Ethne. Ethne is a clinic in Clarkston which is one of the most diverse cities, if not the most diverse city in the United States. It is a city where many immigrants are relocated. May refugees are there. Many, many, many different languages walking through there and really through people in our house that are supporting that agency, we are coming alongside and blessing them with our gifts. IllumiNations. IllumiNations is an organization that we care a lot about. We're working to finish translating the Bible in every last remaining language on Earth which incredible. You talk about being for the world, making sure that there's no one on this planet that doesn't have scripture in their heart language. And the work's gonna finished in our lifetime. And the opportunity that as a church have to come alongside that and finish the work, I get excited 'cause I think, "Well, then, let's make sure there's Bibles in all those languages are sitting in the clinic in Ethne in Clarkston so that everybody who passes through our city, really our region has the opportunity to hear the word in their heart language". This is one where... and look, the way in which we're supporting women and children through the various Mothers Advocacy Project and the Cobb Pregnancy services. I mean, what an incredible opportunity we have to support women both here in Atlanta and in DC. We're not really picking and choosing, we're actually coming alongside people in our house that are already engaged with so many of these organizations. We don't have to go out and find agencies. People are sitting right among you, here and in other locations. But this is their life's work and we get to come alongside them and help support them, and I think that makes it even more powerful.
— I wanna ask you one other really kinda poignant question. So, the scripture is very clear, "The love of money is the root of all evil". I'm asking this to a CEO of a Wealth Management...
— CFO.
— Creation firm.
— I just got promoted.
— Whose job it is is to make money. "The love of money is the root of all evil". We know that it doesn't say, "Money is the root of all evil," but "The love of money". In another place, it says, "For those who desire to get rich, they fall into many temptations". Some translations say, "In many traps". So, you live in this ecosystem of people who are, a lot of them want to get rich and that's why they're coming to you because their goal in life is to get rich and you're in this ecosystem of wealth, how do you balance your role and the value of God's word? The warning of God's word.
— Yeah, well, you have to stay in the word, first of all, because otherwise you fall into the trappings of the world, and I think Cobbs said it in the video. You can search high and low, everywhere for comfort and for peace, you won't find it outside of Jesus. And he tried. He tried. So, money won't provide it. Money itself isn't evil but the scripture does say... And I was having this conversation with a wise friend and woman in this house. The scripture is very clear. It's the love of money that's the root of evil. Money is necessary. Money can be enormously good. It can be a blessing and it will be a blessing for all of these partner agencies. It is blessing that we are sitting here in Trilith, in this location thanks to the Above and Beyond gifts of the past few years. The only way to wrestle with it is to stay in the word, truly. And to remember that nothing I have, nothing, I have received nothing apart from Him. And the opportunity we have to use that money to actually help others see the word, help others know Jesus. I get excited about money being good. When I keep my eyes focused on all the ways in which it can be used to give it back to the Lord what was already His, it is already His to begin with, to give my life away, to give the money away, then, I actually can see where the opportunity I have to be in the world I'm in is a gift itself. And it is the way in which I steward the gifts I have to in fact use it to return it in worship to the Lord. We wanna move into the city, we wanna move into the city in every way we can. Billy and I both do. We think there's an opportunity for us to continue to not take ourselves away from the city, not create lives of comfort, not to use money to make ourselves sort of more distant from all the dark places where people might not wanna go. We actually think there's an opportunity and enjoy the opportunity to kinda get into the grittiness of the city. Billy leads a Ministry for homeless men downtown, you know, nothing will make sure you keep your head more balanced than leading a Ministry for, or Bible study, I should say, for homeless men every week. That's a real counterbalance to the world that I work in every day. I don't ever want to close my eyes to that. I want us to be a part of that. I want us to dive right into and move closer to it and be drawn into it.
— Yeah, I think we wanna encourage people in our house that have the gift of wealth creation and not say, "Oh my goodness, that's terrible that you make so much money". We wanna say, "Wow, you're obviously gifted to make money. That's God's gift in your life". We just wanna encourage them that your fulfillment's gonna come when you use that money for purposes that build people up and leave places better than you found them, and I really just wanna make sure we don't rush past this moment. And so, I'm gonna give you a moment just to be still before the Lord. And you're like, "You know, I didn't come to church today to hear about y'all Above and Beyond thing. I came 'cause I need encouragement. I need a word from God. I needed an experience with God today". But we all need more than anything today is to be in the will of God. That's what all of us need more than any other thing is to be in the will of God. Cobbs said at the end of the video, "I turn my back on God never turned His back on me". And so, what is prayer? Prayer is just turning your face toward God, just turning your face toward God, knowing that His face is toward you. And letting the first thing maybe of the prayer be that God speaks to you. He already knows what's on your list. He already knows what you need. He already knows what you're facing. He already knows what challenges are in your story. He already knows what the difficulty is, where the gap is. He already knows that. He knows what miracle you need already. It's just you maybe just posturing yourself today and say, "God, I'm here. What do You want to say to me? What do You want for me? Because I wanna be in Your will".