Churches and Stewardship

A little more than a month ago, I was given the privilege to give a seminar at the EPIC East Coast Conference around stewardship, where I spoke to a number of university students about the difference between ownership and stewardship using the parable of the talents from Matthew 25 as a guiding text. Some of the key points of the seminar included the key areas of struggle for the Christian in terms of stewardship, including spiritual gifts, time and money.

We also covered some common manifestations of a heart of bad stewardship. I had outlined four attitudes specifically:

Entitlement – “I deserve X because I’m so hard-working / smart / etc..”

Misplaced Ambition – “As long as I’m glorified / happy / rich / respected…”

Apathy – “I don’t care.”

Ego-Centrism – “If I can’t be the best, I don’t want to play.”

It's interesting, because I believe it's the prevalence of these same behaviors which are responsible for many of the personal finance crises which are popping up all over the place in this tattered economy.  At the core, it really is a spiritual problem, which is why I believe that many people are appropriately turning to church for money advice.

The article on CNN.com also details a number of churches and ministries which are doing a fantastic job not just sharing practical knowledge about how money should be managed, but building an important foundation in terms of the fundamentals of stewardship. As instructor Kevin Stacia says, "We always want members of the church and our community to be grounded in how God wants us to manage the things he has entrusted us with. We want to give people an avenue to get knowledge and understanding."

I hope that these courses really do an ample job of focusing on the heart issue of stewardship instead of merely giving them a bag of money-saving tricks. Otherwise, we may simply end up with a bunch of people who are embittered and/or entitled at just a higher level of income. Without the fundamental understanding that God is Master over all that we have and all that we are, money will continue to ensnare both rich and poor.