Reflection About Stewardship

My church back in my hometown starts our Sunday service around 10:30 a.m. every week. We sing a few worship songs then, every Sunday around 10:50 we take up offering. Before we pass around the plates, a particular elder prays over the offering and one thing he always prays is that God would “…allow us to be good stewards of this offering,” which has always made me beg the question, what is proper stewardship? Webster’s dictionary defines stewardship as: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one 's care. So, using this definition, it is assumed that a higher authority is handing over responsibility of something to a lower class being. In this case it would be the church responsibly managing the money God has blessed

Coinciding with that, everything else in creation serves a distinct purpose, has value, and has reason for being there. As one can see, the challenging is finding out where everything fits, which leads Schaeffer to another point; mankind is made in the image God, but we are obviously not God, yet, we are not like anything is nature. Along with this we have a Creator who is personal, since He made us is His image, and infinite, for He did make us and nature. Taking these two viewpoints and placing mankind somewhere in the middle (since we are not God, yet, nothing like anything else in nature) gives the idea that we have ties to both God and nature. God sees creation as good and loves what He has made (Genesis 1). Therefore, Schaeffer believes since God loves His creation, and we are made in His image, that as Christians we should treat creation as God does, by valuing, loving, and preserving it. To Schaeffer, seeing and treating creation as God does is proper biblical stewardship. Having a modified view of this concept is author Gary Fick, who also writes on how we can be good stewards of