Mar-Apr 2011 The Steward Ship
Published on Tuesday, 01 March 2011 08:09 Hits: 29
This year the focus of StewardCAST will be stewardship in Luther's Catechisms. What is the connection between Luther's Catechisms and Christian stewardship? Robert Kolb writes in Teaching God's Children His Teaching: A Guide for the Study of Luther's Catechism, “Luther himself thought that the chief contribution of his reforming efforts had been that men and women, young and old, had come to know the Catechism. That meant that ‘they know how to believe, to live, to pray, to suffer, and to die.'” Kolb continues, “Why have so many people found this little book so important? It is because Luther's Small Catechism is more than a book. It is a way of life. Or, more specifically, it cultivates a world view, out of which we live as believers in Jesus Christ. It creates a mindset which is grounded in the Scriptures and grows out of them. It is a handbook for Christian living” (page 1). Christian stewardship is about living the Christian life. It is the free and joyous activity of the child of God and God's family, the Church, in managing all of life and life's resources for God's purposes. Martin Marty suggests in The Hidden Discipline that the Catechism asks, “What does the Christian life look like if I believe in the forgiveness of sins” (page IX). Luther's Catechisms help us focus on Jesus Christ and the forgiveness He brings. Luther's Catechisms help us see what Christian life looks like. Luther's Catechisms are handbooks for Christian stewardship.
Unfortunately the word “stewardship” has come to be defined not as living the Christian life but as giving money to the church. We need to be much more precise in how we define stewardship if we are going to fully understand the richness and fullness of the term. Raymond M. Olson writes in Stewards Appointed: Ten Studies in Christian Stewardship Based on Luther's Small Catechism, “While the commonly accepted meaning of the word (stewardship) is the one indicated above (giving money to the church), there is also wide recognition, within the Christian church, that there are other areas of life where the Christian is to exercise a ‘stewardship' given by God. The Parable of the Talents is often used to illustrate the fact that each person has been given certain unique personal skills, inherited talents, and particular abilities. It is a part of his responsibility to accept these with mingled humility and self-respect, keeping them sharp and useful for the service of God and of the world which God loves, improving them constantly…A part of stewardship is the responsibility for the use of time…Another area for Christian stewardship is the management and use of the world's natural resources…There is also a stewardship of the body…Most clearly the Christian steward is a steward of the Gospel. This is the greatest treasure with which he is entrusted. It must be his concern to use all he is and has that the Christian message will be kept clear and will be sent forth freely and actively among men. It will be his purpose to cultivate the desire of others to share generously in such a concern. This is a part of the accounting due to his Lord in the stewardship which he holds” (pages 5-6).
Luther's Catechisms provide wonderful tools for the life of the Christian steward. Timothy Wengert writes in Martin Luther's Catechisms: Forming the Faith, “The Small Catechism is not just the Lutheran equivalent of a political slogan: sounds nice but means nothing. It actually reveals the heart of the Christian life: revealing one's sickness through the commandments, the Great Physician in the Creed, the desperate call to the pharmacy for medicine in the Lord's Prayer, and some of the medicine itself in Baptism, Confession, and the Lord's Supper. There is nothing more to the Christian life! So why is it that so many Lutherans think they have graduated from the catechism given how little they use it?” (p. viii)
Jan-Feb 2011 The Steward Ship
Published on Monday, 03 January 2011 08:00 Hits: 41
Transformation Not Transaction
A speaker once summarized stewardship using this phrase, “You have it, we need it, so give it.” Such an attempt to motivate God’s stewards to give does great injustice to Biblical stewardship. Titus 2:11-14 gives a much better description of Christian stewardship.
Titus 2:11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (ESV)
Biblical stewardship is about transformation not transaction. It is about the heart of the steward, not the desire to get something in return for one’s management. The temptation we continually face is to view life as a series of transactions. Much of what we do on a daily basis is about exchanging money for goods and services. When we approach our life of stewardship (managing all of life and life’s resources for God’s purposes) with a transactional mindset we make a grave mistake.
Scott Rodin, writing in Revolution in Generosity, describes the difference between transformation and transaction.
“It is easy, and desperately wrong, to reduce giving to the transaction of exchanging money, time, and talents for good will and the contented feeling of having given generously. The focus of this lie is in the idea that we are able to make our giving another transaction where we ‘buy’ the peace of mind and contentment we desire. We mix in with this the biblical commands on stewardship and create a distorted picture that confuses sacrificial giving out of love and gratitude with a purchase of peace of mind. We can believe the lie that we can buy God’s favor, compensate God and the church for our lack of obedience and discipleship, and atone through occasional generosity for the greed and self-centeredness that permeates the rest of our lives. Against this background, the holistic transformation of the godly steward to true generosity stands in radical relief” (page 106).
It is good for us to examine the motives we have as we steward all that God has entrusted to us. St. Paul tells Titus and us that it is God’s grace in Christ that motivates us to be “zealous for good works.” We give because He first gave Himself to us and for us. We give because our hearts are transformed by the Holy Spirit as He works through Word and Sacrament. We give with no strings attached. We give with no desire for anything in return. As Jesus instructs the disciples in Matthew 10:8b, “Freely you have received, freely give.”