I speak to you as a leader responsible for your generation. Take responsibility for your generation. Take responsibility for your current reality, for the part you played in creating that reality, as well as the part that involves you changing it as necessary. And quite frankly, if you are not willing to take responsibility, you should not be in leadership in the church–or any organization that requires moral leadership for that matter.
Alan Hirsh, 5Q xxiv
Christians talk a lot about stewardship. Being stewards is indeed a biblical idea (though “managers” might be a better term, especially if modified by an adjective, e.g. “servant managers,” or “household managers.”) We know that what we are entrusted with is ultimately God’s resources.
What we may miss is that stewardship also describes our social roles in our various communities. We are stewards of God’s resources for the individuals or communities he intends those resources to bless. I explore the biblical meaning of stewardship vocabulary in this essay at Anabaptist Perspectives.
Managers in God’s Household: How to be a Steward
Kyle Stoltzfus and I discuss these ideas on a podcast with Anabaptist Perspectives:
I discuss on a Strength to Strength talk:
I am not talking about how to handle profits gained through business. Of course, if you do own a business that generates large profits, that does result in responsibilities to use that money well, but here I am concerned with a different question: What does it mean to steward business giftings and abilities and to steward business roles and opportunities?
I tackled these questions in a two-part series on the Anabaptist Perspectives blog.
Part One: Business People among God’s “Servant-Managers”
Part Two: Entrepreneurs as “Servant-Managers“
Both of these pieces build from the basic biblical idea that stewardship is not just about what God entrusts us with, but also about who he intends should benefit from what he entrusts to us. We manage God’s creation for his creatures—especially our human neighbors.
An earlier post at Anabaptist Perspectives gives the biblical exposition.
This post from the early days of the 2020 pandemic reflects on stewardship in relation to hard times. It was also recorded in audio.
Factories, Gardens, Giving, Guns: A COVID-19 Economy and Stewardship