How Biblical Stewardship is Less Like Accounting and More Like Starting Your Own Business

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When you hear a pastor mention “stewardship,” it usually means he’s going to talk about money. So the whole topic of stewardship often ranges somewhere between tedious and awkward. Stewardship does have to do with money, of course, but the biblical understanding of stewardship is far richer and deeper than mere money management.

Many Christians have a one-dimensional view of stewardship. Their approach to stewardship runs something along these lines: “carefully managing my money so that I can give God His 10% share so that I still have enough to meet all my present and future wants and needs.”

That understanding of stewardship is faulty on several counts. The most obvious is that a steward is not an owner, but the popular understanding of stewardship focuses almost all its attention on the self (go back and notice the four first-person singular pronouns in that definition).

But there’s a deeper problem that me-centered way of thinking about stewardship also fails to consider the entrepreneurial nature of biblical stewardship. Think of Jesus’s parable of the three stewards (Matthew 25). Remember that the boss allocated different sums of money to three stewards, according to their ability: one received one “talent” (quite a tidy sum, the equivalent of 16 years’ wages for a working man), one received five talents, and one other – clearly the most gifted and responsible – was given ten talents.

Turns out the boss’ estimation of his men’s ability was accurate. The two most responsible stewards managed to double the value of their portfolios. But the other one could do no more than return the original amount to his boss.

What is curious about the story is that the boss condemns the underachieving steward as “wicked and lazy,” even though he was scrupulous about protecting the assets. His problem was that he thought and behaved like an accountant (precisely and carefully) and not like an entrepreneur (creatively).

A better, more biblically-based definition of stewardship would look like this: “creatively investing the resources God has entrusted to me with Kingdom priorities in view.”

ENTREPRENEURIAL STEWARDSHIP

You’ll notice that the language of accounting in the first definition (“carefully managing”) is replaced with more the dynamic language of entrepreneurship, “creatively investing.” There’s a world of difference between managing and investing resources. (Just ask that third steward.) If I’m investing the resources God has entrusted to me, I’m thinking about return on investment. I recognize that my control over these resources is given in trust, and I have responsibility to the Owner.

So the one question before me is this: how can I make these resources create growth and value for the Owner?

RESOURCES AT MY DISPOSAL

Notice also that we’re talking not just about money but about all “the resources God has entrusted to me.”

The old triad of “time, talent, and treasure” gets us close to a broader understanding. Time is a resource, and so is talent. But so is social capital: that whole array of advantages I have because of my demographics. Here intangibles like socio-economic status, gender, race, nationality, and other factors come into play. As a steward, I recognize that I haven’t earned the privileges and advantages that come to me by birth, but I am responsible for how I use those resources.

So Biblical stewardship thinks holistically about resources. It’s not just about money but about all the resources that are at my disposal. They all belong to God, and I am responsible to Him for the way I use all of them.

KINGDOM PRIORITIES

“Values investing” is a category for financial planners. Some investors care more about the non-financial return on their investments because other values are more important than the financial bottom line. Here values such as care for the planet or animal welfare or the rights of indigenous workers (“fair trade”) might come to the fore.

There is a set of values that guides the thinking and investing in biblical stewardship as well. The biblical steward thinks about investing resources “with Kingdom priorities in view.”

So what are those “Kingdom priorities” that should guide the way I invest the resources God has put at my disposal? There’s no mystery here. What does God think are the most important things happening on planet earth? Those are the values that ought to guide my entrepreneurial endeavors.

I think there are two key values, and one of them is primary:

1. Primarily: that the Good News about Jesus goes out to the nations and that disciples are being made. That is Job One; Jesus made it our primary task.

2. But also that justice be done and mercy be shown to the suffering. These have always been priorities for the church as God’s people have responded to God’s mercy toward them by showing mercy toward their neighbors. Justice and mercy are never the primary work of the church, but they are a necessary reflection of what it means to follow Jesus (James 1:27, see also my post “What’s the Church For?”).

PARABLE REVISITED

Jesus told the Parable of the Three Stewards as a cautionary tale. It’s a “don’t be that guy” kind of story. No one wants to face the Master the way that third steward faced the boss that day.

But one day when I was thinking about that parable, I realized I was focusing on the wrong character. I’m not the guy who’s been given little: I’ve been given so much. God saw fit to give me a stable Christian home, good physical and mental health, and a good education. I’m a gainfully employed English-speaking Christian living in an affluent culture. With all these resources at my disposal, God rightly expects a good return on His investment in my life.

TWO KEY QUESTIONS

So, yes, biblical stewardship is careful and responsible. But it is not just careful, it is also creative. As a child of God entrusted with resources at my disposal, I want to use those resources creatively to advance His Kingdom.

I need to ask myself two questions:

1. Inventory: What are the resources God has put at my disposal? I need to do a survey of the assets God has entrusted to me. The last thing I want is for the Owner to call me to account for resources I never thought about. So, yes, I’ll think about my financial priorities. But I’ll also think about the way I use my time, the way I use my natural abilities, my skills, my spiritual gifting. And I’ll include among those assets the social capital – the rights and privileges that were assigned to me at birth.

2. Creativity: How can I leverage those assets to make God’s Name great, to make disciples both in “Jerusalem and Judea” (my own circles) but in “the uttermost parts of the earth” (the unreached people-groups of the world?

None of us can answer those questions for anyone else.

Each of us must identify the resources God has entrusted to us and how best to utilize those resources to accomplish His purposes in our lives. But each of us must someday answer for how we’ve managed those resources.

I have long said that there is nothing in this life that matters nearly so much as two words in the next: “Well done.”

I want to arrange my life priorities with that Moment in view.