I have four things to say about stewardship, and only one of them has to do with dollars.
Not that I mind talking about money. I think the organized church is not always honest on the subject-and particularly with people who have it. Several of my wealthy friends who became Christians in midlife have been immediately asked to serve on every board and committee in sight, for the benefit of their “prayers and counsel.” The truth is they hadn’t been Christians long enough to have much of a prayer life, and their counsel certainly wasn’t worth much, since they knew little about religious organizations in America.
What the inviters did want was their money. I wish they had been honest enough to say that. Two or three of my friends went through some very trying times once they realized how they’d been played for suckers.
But first:
We Are Stewards of Relationships
The early church was not famous for how it grew, nor even for its balanced budget. It was known for the way people loved one another.
I learned my relational lesson the hard way. When our son was about to be married, I volunteered to spend some time with him explaining how to build a successful home. He replied, “But, Dad, I’m not going to be an executive. I’m going to be a professor.”
I was totally bewildered. What did that have to do with it?
He said, “Well, if I were going to be an executive, I’d come to you, because you’ve run a business well. You always thought production before relation, and I think that’s correct in a business. But I’m going to be building a home, and frankly, I think our family has been great in spite of you rather than because of you.”
I asked for a replay of that paragraph, but it came out the same way the second time, just like on TV.
When I pressed him to explain, he said, “Dad, you were the president of your company, and when you came home, you were president in the home. You used the same techniques both places. Mother was your vice-president, you took grievances from the kids after they had gone up through the line of command, and you tried to get us to use our time productively rather than relationally.
“What you really never knew was that relationship is the production of the home.”
I suddenly realized he was right. For example, I had seldom watched television with the family. I’d go to my study after dinner-and be bothered as I heard them out there enjoying themselves. I’d feel compelled to go walk in front of the screen a couple of times each evening, making remarks about people who wasted time. Of course, they went right on watching, which didn’t improve the production a bit but did hurt the relation.
My son was kind enough still to invite me to be best man in his wedding, saying, “Dad, I understand, and I love you because you were doing the best you knew.” But obviously, I had to change. I called the family together and told them I was going to try to be different. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life. The five years since then have been frustrating at times but also exciting.
I still want the organization I head to be productive. Nothing makes me angrier than walking into a retail store and finding the clerks so friendly with each other they don’t let the customers bother them. I wish they would at least invite us to join the conversation until they can get around to waiting on us.
But I am trying to be a good steward of my relationships. And I have come to see that the church is more like a family than a business. The relation is more important than the production. We get into trouble if we start borrowing the language of figures from business and measuring the church with it. Relationships cannot be defined by an inventory. We have to use terms like “healthy,” “unhealthy,” “improving,” “deteriorating,” and “spiritual.”
As part of that stewardship, we owe each other encouragement. The president of Sloan-Kettering Laboratories once told a medical convention, “My father was a country doctor. We now know, scientifically speaking, that he didn’t carry a thing in that black bag that would cure anybody. But people got well because he patted them and said, ‘You’re going to make it.’ ” That encouragement released the body’s amazing power to heal itself.
That’s the kind of activity-tending to relationships-where Christians must shine.
We Are Stewards of a Special Identity
I was having lunch with the pastor of the Moscow Baptist Church and asked how many members he had, to which he replied, “Fifty-six hundred.”
“How many attend?” I asked.
“Six thousand.”
I commented that this was a little different ratio than in Texas, where I lived.
“Yes,” he said, “we have about four hundred who come but aren’t ready yet to take on the identity of a Christian.”
Then he used an interesting phrase: “In Russia, we have no four-wheel Christians,” by which he meant those who ride to their baptism, to Easter and Christmas services, and to their funeral.
At this point, I wanted to change the subject!
True Christians have a stewardship of identity within them; they are pilgrims, sojourners, citizens of heaven on their way home. That makes them participants, not observers. I wonder if the Lord will someday say to us observers, “I never really knew you; I only met you while you were observing my participants.”
I asked one of the finest scholars in America what he thought the most important thing was, and he said, “The next question.” Very clever-but it made me realize he was actually an intellectual reporter on life rather than a participant, and in this way he was able to appear responsible while being irresponsible. More than once, I confess, I have played the same game.
In contrast, a Christian I know who really owns his identity and has thought about it is Ron Ritchie of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California. He was telling me how tired he became of the cool reaction he got on airplanes every time he called himself a minister when someone asked what he did. He came up with a far better answer: “I tell people about Jesus if they want to know.” Then he shuts up and lets the Spirit take over.
I began trying something like that. I had always shied away from evangelism visiting teams. But I began telling the Lord in the morning, “Today, I promise not to duck”-in other words, when religion comes up in a conversation, I will deal with it just as naturally as with any other subject. Whenever I do that-somebody invariably opens the door. I was flying home from New York one Monday morning sitting next to a vice-president for one of the overseas airlines. He was headed out for the week, and he casually turned to me and said, “I’m sure glad to be leaving home.”
I remembered that feeling from earlier years, when my children were small, and I used my business responsibilities to escape perpetual parenthood.
“Why is that?” I asked him.
“Because my wife made me go to church yesterday, and all during the service I sat there saying to myself, D— hypocrite! until I couldn’t wait to get out. . . . Isn’t that the way you feel?”
Now-was I going to duck or not? Was I going to be a steward of my Christian identity?
I assured him that at one time in my life I had felt the same way. But then I’d learned to really enjoy going to church.
Suddenly he acted a little trapped there by the window and pulled out a magazine to read. I sat wondering if I’d blown it. He squirmed in his seat, and presently he said, “I’m going to the rest room, but when I come back, I want to ask you a personal question.”
He was a long time coming back. Finally he climbed into his seat, stepping on my feet. He picked up his magazine again and said not a word. By this time I was becoming amused; he was like a fish on a line, hooked but refusing to come alongside the boat. I just waited, because if the Spirit had started this work, he could finish it.
Suddenly he blurted out, “How do you pray?”
I gave a very simple explanation, something that probably wouldn’t satisfy the theologians-I said you just had a conversation with God. That seemed to help him. The upshot of the discussion that followed was an invitation for me to come see him the next time I go to New York. I hope to do that.
If I duck the natural conversation about spiritual matters that God brings across my path, I can’t make up for it by joining the church visitation program and calling on three people he didn’t direct me to. This is the stewardship of identity. I must accept the fact that I am a Christian and behave like one.
And when we do what we do in the Spirit, he has a way of bringing a great deal of light while removing most of the heat.
We Are Stewards of Our Gifts
We Baptists talk a great deal about talents and not much about spiritual gifts. But I am becoming more and more convinced that the gifts are what the Spirit uses. Again, my theologian friends probably wouldn’t salute my interpretation, but I firmly believe that gifts are simply talents that have been unctionized by the Spirit. (Now, grammarians know that unctionize isn’t a word, but you get the point.) Since all of us have at least one talent, we all have a potential gift.
Here are a few that call for careful stewardship:
Teaching. The challenge here is to give people what they desperately need. If we are reaching hungry people with genuine bread, they are going to form a line. Recently I have observed some very large Bible classes. The teachers have certain common denominators: they are good communicators who keep in mind they are teaching people, not a subject; they show how scriptural principles bring answers to everyday needs; and they give people the option of accepting God’s help, just as he does. Where people feel love and find answers, they come, and often in droves. Genuine content is more effective than contests.
Hospitality. Our daughter Brenda is still helping me with this one. Her husband, Rick, had hired a black ex-convict who was then rearrested for something, and Brenda, with her heart of mercy, went to see the woman he’d been living with. She found her and a small child living in a shack without food. She brought food, helped her clean up the place, and formed a friendship, while Rick got the man out of jail.
Eventually Brenda brought up the idea of their getting married. She was told that people in their circumstances rarely did that. Brenda explained that it was right before God, and eventually the couple became convinced. But where would they hold a wedding? They had no extra money and no church connections.
So Brenda offered her north Dallas home for the occasion and solicited the help of a minister. It was a lovely evening.
A few days later, Rick got a note from the man saying they had to leave town and couldn’t tell where they were going. It turned out there was an underworld contract on his life. In fact, one of his friends had just been killed. But, the note said, they would never forget Brenda and Rick.
I asked my daughter how she felt. She got teary and replied, “No matter where they are nor how long they live, they’ll know somebody cared.”
Discernment. Too many of us business people leave our brains home when we come to church, voting for things or agreeing to things that make absolutely no sense. I’m not saying the church should be run like a business, but it doesn’t have to be run like a poor business, which is what often happens.
I was leading a singles’ retreat in Florida and met a couple thinking about getting married. She, a stewardess, had lived a very insecure life. He, meanwhile, seemed about as irresponsible as they come. Over lunch, they asked my opinion.
I said frankly they should not marry. She needed security, and he didn’t offer it; he was more interested in going around giving his testimony than in working. (I’m not against testimony, but I’m against it in lieu of work.)
She took me seriously and decided against the marriage. Three years later, I was on a plane to Chicago, when all of a sudden she dropped down beside me and said with surprise, “You’re Fred Smith!” (I was glad to know, because in my stage of senility I sometimes forget.) Then she bubbled out the news that in eighteen days she would be marrying a seminary professor. It sounded like a perfect match.
In a few weeks she sent me a card from Saint Andrews, and anybody wise enough to play golf on a honeymoon must have a rosy future ahead.
The stewardship of these three gifts and others like them is not a trivial matter. We must take them seriously.
We Are Stewards of Money
I’ll say this quickly and pointedly. I resent a great deal of the Christian talk about money. Those who refer to being “blessed” with money give me the impression they think God has made a brilliant decision about where to put his funds. It’s an affront to the poor. I wish they would say “entrusted” or some other stewardship word instead of “blessed.”
I also think it’s wrong to teach that we can bribe God, even with the tithe. Recently I’ve had some fun with one of the ministries that claims if you send them a dollar, God will provide you with ten. I wrote them saying I agreed with their theology-and it would be faster if they’d send me a dollar and keep the ten God would give them back, rather than having me serve as the middleman a dollar at a time. I assured them I would cash their check immediately so God would not be delayed in blessing them, and I’d even provide them with my vacation address so their seed-offerings would not have to be held up.
Evidently their computer hasn’t handled such a letter before, because they’ve been a little late responding, let alone sending their contribution.
I do tithe, even though I do not believe it is scripturally required today. I have never knowingly made a dollar without giving at least 10 percent of the gross to God. That started when I was working a week (six days) for six dollars, and I gave sixty cents. Last year my giving was in the six figures, and that wasn’t as hard to give as the sixty cents. But I’m convinced if I had not given the sixty cents, I wouldn’t have given the six figures.
However, tithing ought not to be used to police people into works instead of grace. To a group of laymen that included actual billionaires as well as several millionaires I said recently, “The tithe is an Old Testament scheme that lets the rich get out of giving.” (I didn’t owe any of them money, so I could be extremely brave.)
All I know about giving can be put in three points:
Those who legalistically give a tithe never really enjoy it. Those who give out of love thoroughly enjoy it and are not worried about figuring on the net or gross, or even more.
Giving is the only drain plug I know for greed. The sin of the poor is envy, and the sin of the rich is greed. I suppose if you have to choose between the two, take greed, because it at least makes you productive! Envy doesn’t produce anything but ulcers. However, neither one belongs in the Christian life. Giving is the way to drain greed out of the soul.
God is basically interested not in our money but our maturity. Some people try to substitute service for giving, while others give to avoid serving. Neither one works; both are required for Christian maturity. That’s why if you show me your calendar and your checkbook, I can write your biography. I will know how you spend your time and your money; that constitutes your treasure.
Trying to substitute one gift for the other is really being dishonest, and God will not honor that. For him, the process is as sacred as the result. We need to remember this when thinking about using manipulation in his work. He is not in favor of cutting corners, and we, as his stewards, must set our policies according to his principles.
Fred Smith is president of Fred Smith Associates, Dallas, Texas.
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