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Christian Stewardship Part 1
Charles Whitehead, leader, speaker and teacher with an international ministry with the CCR, reflects on how to be good stewards with what God has given us.
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The man who receives five talents puts them to work and doubles them, whereas the man who receives just one talent thinks only of himself and his fear of failure, rather than responding to the confidence the owner has placed in him. So he’s held accountable for playing it safe - not even having the courage to invest the one talent in the relative safety of an interest-bearing bank account. Stewardship clearly covers management and accountability for something that belongs to someone else. The talent was never his in the first place - it had simply been placed in his care for a particular time and reason, but he was accountable to the owner for what he did with it and how he used it. This was the agreement, and it’s the same for us today. When I say “Jesus is Lord”, what exactly do I mean? It’s so easy to repeat words like these without giving much thought to the challenges they present. A look at the word “stewardship? in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in Christian usage it means “the responsible use of resources, especially money, time and talents, in the service of God”. In the parable we’ve been looking at, a talent was a significant sum of money worth about two years’ wages, but in our own day it has taken on a broader meaning. When we speak of “talented” people we’re usually thinking of their gifts, skills, and abilities, and we often do this in the context of their work, possessions, status, and life-styles. So following the lesson of the parable, when I now look at my possessions, my money, my job, my gifts - do I own these? Are they mine, or is my responsibility to manage them in the service of God who has entrusted them to me? When it comes to my time, is it mine to do with as I wish, or is it His, to be used as He directs? In one sense I know very well that everything comes from God, but to declare that Jesus is my Lord means I recognise that everything I am, have, and do is surrendered to Him and under His control. It’s all His, nothing is mine, I have no right to any of it. But amazingly and wonderfully He loves and trusts me enough to give it all to me to hold and use in His service. So provided I know that what I have is really His, I don’t need to feel guilty about having it. He ’s the owner, I’m the steward - it’s as simple as that. But I must never forget that according to the parable in Matthew’s Gospel, one day I’ll be asked to give Him, the owner, an account of my stewardship. “The earth is the Lord’s” I’ve known all this for many years. I well remember when Sue and I knelt down in the living room of our home some 27 years ago, and committed not only our lives but also our house, all our possessions, our finances, our family, my job to the Lord - to be used for His purposes. We understood then, and we still understand today, what we were doing. We were handing back to God all that was rightfully His; we were acknowledging what was then a newly learned truth, that “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1 and 1 Cor.10:26). As I think back to that evening 27 years ago, and to the radical step we were taking, I recognise that there was great faith and glorious naivety in it - I doubt that we really appreciated what we were doing. But what we DID know was that Jesus had entered our lives in an amazing new way, that we were wonderfully in love with Him, and that this was now the most important thing in our lives. Have we remained faithful to what we did that night? Broadly speaking I think I can say yes, but in every detail - no. There have been, and still are, times when I try to do things my way, when I take back control, confident in my ability to deal with things. Usually they work out, but I ’m often conscious that I just missed God’s best for me. I then need to remind myself that I’m the steward, not the creator-owner, and that He always knows what’s best for me. I need to keep asking Him, otherwise I’ll be settling for second best. That’s why part of the title of this article says “getting the best out of everything”. What I do may be good, but unless it is what God is asking of me it won’t be the best, and Christian stewardship is all about getting the best out of everything. So in this article I want to reflect on what it really means to be good stewards of all that God has given us. “In partnership with God” The creation story in Genesis chapter 2 describes how God put Adam into the Garden of Eden to look after it. The Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Gen. 2:15). Man gives every animal its name: “whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name“ (Gen.2:19-20). In Genesis 3:17-19 after the Fall, it becomes clear that man’s stewardship is now going to be much harder. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life”. The Old Testament brings in a number of laws about this - for example the sabbath or seventh year is to be a fallow year, and the fiftieth year is to be a Year of Jubilee. The Old and New Testaments both suggest a clear inter-dependence between man and the rest of creation, and that it’s our responsibility to exercise our stewardship in a proper manner. I think the position is well summed up by the Church of England statement before the 1992 Earth Summit, which begins with these words: “We all share and depend on the same world with its finite and often non-renewable resources. Christians believe that this world belongs to God by creation, redemption and sustaining, and that He has entrusted it to humankind, made in His image. We are in the position of stewards”. Partnership with God involves taking responsibility for what He’s given us - we are to be good stewards of all the earth’s resources. “The effect of a broken relationship” Mahatma Gandhi said that the world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone?‘s greed. This remains true today, and in our stewardship of God’s world we are called to a higher view of creation than that taken by the secular conservationists. Whilst respecting the work of all those who seek to make concern for the environment an international priority, Christians have a much clearer understanding of what has gone wrong. Love of God and love of neighbour stand at the heart of all that we believe, and so the environmental disasters around us should be clear reminders of the effects of Original Sin and a broken relationship with God. It’s not my intention to try to address the complex issues of sustainability, global warming, climate change etc. - others are far better qualified to do this than I am. But we all need to engage positively in the debate about the environment - we live in God’s world and are responsible to Him for our stewardship of it. It’s our poorer brothers and sisters who suffer most when we think only of our own well-being, and fail to see our stewardship of God’s resources with moral and spiritual eyes. God has entrusted His creation to us - we stand here in His place. “God’s priorities” Let’s now try to apply the teaching given in the parable in Matthew 25:14-30, beginning with the way we use our gifts and our time. Each of us has the same amount of time in a day, and there will always be enough time available to do what God wants. What’s more, we?‘ll discover that we don’t burn out in the process. We hear a lot today about stress and burn-out, and most of it can be avoided if we will only follow God’s priorities. Do I know what His priorities are for me? When I follow them, I will probably not do everything I thought was important, nor perhaps the things others may think I should have done - but that doesn’t matter. I’m working for an audience of one, and I must never let myself be the victim of peer pressure or the expectations of others. The best use of my time is to do what God is asking, and this will usually be connected to the use of my gifts. I think it’s very simple - God has given me certain gifts and abilities, and He wants me to use them; they’re not trophies for everyone to admire. He’s given me particular gifts so that with His help and guidance I may use them to serve those around me, thereby producing fruit in their lives and in the life of the Church. In the same way, I’ll make the best use of my time if I spend some of it listening to Him. Time with God is always fruitful, and it makes it easier to say no to invitations and demands which may seem good, but which I’ll discover haven’t come from Him. For me personally, stewardship of my time is one of the greatest challenges I face. I receive so many invitations to speak here, to speak there, to join this committee or that group - all of them coming with a phrase like “we’ve been praying about it, and we felt God saying we should invite you”. Sometimes the answer’s easy - I’m already committed on that date or for those days, but at other times it’s more difficult. Which is more important - two days speaking to an order of sisters in a convent, or four days at a Charismatic Renewal Conference in Africa? In order to be able to answer these questions, I must know the priorities God has given me. On holiday in Mallorca last year, and with more time than usual for prayer and reading, I found the Lord questioning me about my attention to the priorities He gave me some years ago. I know very well what these are - the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, ecumenical relations, ministry to young people, and my local church . As I evaluated the way I was using my time, I was disturbed to discover how much was going into things which were not among these priorities. Of course they were all “good” things - but not particularly my things, so I realised I would have to make some changes. I want to be a good steward of my time and of the gift s the Lord has given me, and this will mean listening to Him and then trying to do what He asks, safe in the knowledge that when He calls me He also equips me to answer the call.
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What
do I mean when I speak about Christian stewardship, and what exactly
are the responsibilities of a steward? Is it just about
how much money I give to the Church and to others, or is there more
to it than that? What do the Scriptures and the Church have to say about
it? These questions were running through my mind when I was asked to
speak on this subject a few months ago. In Matthew 25 verses 14 to 30
we find the parable of the talents, where Jesus teaches us that a steward
is someone who manages something for an owner until he wants it back
again. In the parable, the owner divides his money among his servants
according to their abilities. So he’s made a judgement that each
one will be able to handle the sum he is given. What this tells us is
that the key point is not how much we are given, but how we use what
we are given. 