What is Stewardship? – Part 1

Perhaps now more than ever, there’s a compelling need for Godly stewardship to be understood and lived out in our lives individually, in families, organisations and communities. Stewardship is one of those words and concepts that we kind of know about and if mentioned at all, is in the context of finances. This limits the full understanding of a core truth that when lived, brings freedom and life.

Simply stated, stewardship is the privilege and responsibility of managing another person’s resources well on their behalf.

Each of us is charged to be a steward of:

• our relationship with God and other people
• our body and wellbeing
• our vocation
• our finances
• our surrounding physical environment

Stewardship is based on and comes from our relationship with God and our dependence on Him. We are, in the first instance, stewards of the gift of eternal life that God has given us, redeemed to be in relationship with Him.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God….” Ephesians 2:8.

Stewardship is a mandate that has been given to us and compels us to walk with posture of humility that knows and must repeatedly state “it’s not about me” – “it’s not mine, I don’t own any of it.” These can be hard words to say yet they are vital for the freedom and purposes God has for each of us.

Conversely we see a well-known example of a steward in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lord Denathor was the steward of Gondor whose duty was to steward the people and kingdom of Gondor until the Return of the King. Denathor was a bad steward and lost his way and his vision. Tolkien showed us another biblical truth from the book of Proverbs in his epic story : “without vision the people will perish!”

Key ingredients for Kingdom Stewardship

• Failure and trust – It sounds absurd but failure and how we handle it in dependence is vital for us to grow into our lives as stewards. The Apostle Peter shows us this in his growth and stewardship journey, learning and growing through failure and trust to steward the early Church.
• Faithfulness, not performance – Stewardship is about faithfulness and not our own performance.
• Excellence – however, this does not abdicate us from the need to seek excellence in all we do.
• Family – families come in all shapes and sizes. As well as stewarding our own families, family in-turn has a stewardship role in society for children, societal values and norms and human flourishing.
• Ownership vs stewardship – Speaking from personal experience; When your identity and your role or vocation become meshed together, an ‘ownership’ mentality increases and stewardship decreases. We have all seen this in the world and sadly we see it far too often in business, politics, churches and Christian organisations. The fruit of this dynamic ranges from less than optimal Kingdom Outcomes through to division of God’s people, control, conflict, pain and suffering as we place ourselves wrongly in the centre of the circle.
• Stewardship is temporary – Remember that whatever your stewardship assignment, it is temporary and for a season.
• The Gospel of the Kingdom – Stewardship is part of the whole gospel of the Kingdom of God. Pray for stewardship to permeate our homes, businesses, politics, churches, schools, boards and servant leadership.

“Remember that whatever your stewardship assignment, it is temporary and for a season”

The heart of stewardship is that this is God’s story and He is telling it. We have a wonderful privilege of being invited into it as stewards, with each of us having an important and unique role to play as join together to pray and eagerly await…..the return of the one true King.

Written by Nicholas Marks, CEO of aifc