A big part of transformational leadership is stewarding resources on behalf of the powerless. It is not a complex process, and to some extent all Christians who have access to resources should be transformational leaders. Resources can be defined in such ways as money, property, people, and power (although not limited to those four by any means).
All money and property belongs to God, not us. We are stewards of money and property. On average in America, Christians give away less money (percentage-wise) to their churches and charities than nonChristians. And, often money that is given by Christians to churches is not stewarded on behalf of the powerless. Instead, it is used to build bigger buildings and grow internal programs. To use another example, a large percentage of federal money that is distributed to poor communities in America never actually makes its way into the intended communities. This should not be so, but people use that money to perpetuate cycles of poverty through programming because they are not interested in the transformation of individuals and communities. Otherwise, they would be out of a job.
I could give other examples about people (such as matching mentors with mentees) or power (such as our call to take on powerful systems that are guilty of injustices). The point is: Do you see yourself as a person who stewards resources on behalf of the powerless (which captures well the subversive nature of the gospel), or are you trying to steward resources on behalf of yourself so that you can live a better life (which captures well the goals of individualism in America)? Often when we talk about stewardship in a church it is assumed that we are talking about money, but stewardship actually applies to every area of our lives.
1 comment:
Bryan
Man, you really are tempting me to go into a long, long rant with this one. For the sake of you and your bloggers I'll try to restrain myself.
Let's start with charitable giving. It is complete and utter sin that Christians give less that non-Christians. This is beyond appalling - it's sickening.
Second, we now live in a culture where government is expected to address all the ills of society, particularly when it comes to things financial. This is just wrong, and in my view it's the fault of the Church. Here's why:
God established government to provide law and order (punish evil), and military safety (from attacks from outside)to its people. It was never meant to feed the poor, clothe the naked, etc. Those jobs are clearly given to the Church. But... the Church failed (and failed miserably) in her duties, such that government stepped in to perform those jobs. As you would expect, since government wasn't 'God designed' to perform these jobs, it has done them badly. So, we now have a welfare state and the entitlement mentality that goes with it.
At this point the options for individuals to change this state of affairs are just about gone, other than voting for leaders that support proper change. Those leaders are few and far between, because they'll never get elected if they want to end the public dole.
That said, there's certainly things that we Christians can do to get back to our calling of addressing social issues. To start we have to, as you correctly point out, get back to properly exercising Biblical principles of stewardship in our personal finances. We have to end our selfishness.
Next, we have to start being obedient in feeding the poor, clothing the naked, etc. as we are commanded to do.
Also, and to me this is as important as the other points, we have to work at teaching those we help to help themselves. Val and I battle this all the time with our LAMP mentees. We spend a lot of time explaining to them the Biblical ethics of hard work, personal discipline, being self sufficient, not being dependant on government to provide, etc. It's a real challenge, because we're trying to change generations of bad thinking here. But it's a challenge worth stepping up to.
Anyone else want to jump in here?
John V
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