A Historical Perspective of Stewardship, series 2

Tom Chow, 63B MM502PPHB

Fall 2013 - Session #3: Dr. Isaac, A Historical Perspective of Stewardship

            Dr. Isaac’s talk brought me a fresh apprehension on the historical perspective of stewardship in informative, evocative, and missiological ways. First of all, he laid the groundwork that stewardship is not a mean to an end, but a Christian metaphor. We as stewards do not manage God’s given treasure for personal benefit, hoarding, saving money and cumulating possession for our own sake. At root, stewardship is a Christian identity, both being and doing. It should be our whole posture of living with time, money, truths, people we interact, and in fact everything that God has entrusted us.

What is the North American contribution to Stewardship? David Wells said this in his book, No Place for Truth, “American Theology is a mile wide but an inch thick”. Before I came to Gordon-Conwell, silly to admit this, but I was often attracted by TV evangelists’ messages, interested in almost any workshops, revival meetings, or educational conference. I heard a lot, but processed very little. I was entrusted with the teachings, but I was not matching up as being a steward of what I received and shared them. Now I think it is the time to give what I have. The Center for Stewardship Leaders at Luther Seminary stated that, “Stewardship is showing our thankfulness to God by sharing and caring for others in response to God's love for us.”

While stewardship is all but unknown in Europe in recent decades, Biship Hanns Lilje reminded us that, "Stewardship rightly understood is equivalent to a program for putting Christ into all aspects of daily life". Hans Küng raised a comment and question about stewardship. Today Christians live between two spectrums, the great world religions on one hand, and the secular humanism on the other hand. Is there any distinction and special contribution that Christians made about stewardship? Thus as stewards we yearn for a new life different from the earth and the rest.

In the past, stewardship has diminished as the truncation concept. Stewardship is not just one part of our life, but as the motto that intertwines “connect, grow, serve, stewardship-A Way of Life”. Stewardship as a means rather than as an end, which is spiritual, mission, noble, material means; not church management, financial, or more than budget year after year.

In the past, stewardship has misunderstood as the spiritualization concept. However, stewardship is not something we practice in the heavenly realm but down-to-earth. The Early Christians were known for their generosity regarding the poor and widows. They fed the prisoners and support the widows not primarily for the church growth, but as a expression of the gospel with its teaching to be good stewards. There were two differing visions of reality influencing people view on stewardship in this life.

Greek worldview

            Body-evil

            Death-good

            Salvation- from the earth

            Body/soul dualism

            Jewish worldview

            Body-good

            Death-the last enemy

            Salvation- the new heaven/earth

            Flesh/Spirit antimony

Finally Dr. Isaac challenged us to expand our concept of stewardship to be mission driven. It is based on having a Christian identity as taught in Matthew 25, the talents parable, and numerous teaching on possessions. At the end, I was convinced that Mission is linked closely to stewardship, and stewardship is indeed a mission. He charged us to live and minister to embrace the mission of stewardship, “for money goes where the vision is”, what a cool statement of wisdom that this historian that brought us.