Two perspectives, one conclusion

Stewardship for All? Bedru Hussein and Lynn Miller. Good Books, 2006. 104 pages.

Two authors from vastly different parts of the globe come at the subject of stewardship from their own cultural perspective and yet end up with a very similar conclusion.

Bedru Hussein, an influential pastor and church leader in Ethiopia, was instrumental in writing a paper that outlines succinctly what is meant by stewardship for their churches. In a country with less individual resources than most, what is the expectation for giving?

Hussein’s premise is that God owns everything and we are to be his managers. So even if members of his congregation are just getting by, they still need to be faithful in their giving and let God take care of the details. The local church, further, needs to be self-supporting to become fruitful. Continuing to rely solely on outside sources for support keeps the church in infancy. By becoming self-reliant, they become strong and grow. This means sharing what they have.

Lynn Miller works as a stewardship representative for the Mennonite Church in the U.S. and travels widely to speak on stewardship. By his account it would seem that we in North America have a much more complicated sense of taking care of business.

There is so much wealth in this part of the world, we rationalize things in bizarre ways. We all need our own lawn mowers, hedge clippers, power washers, etc. We don’t want to borrow from neighbours because we don’t want to inconvenience them or possibly suggest we can’t afford it. We need to put away money for retirement so we can live well in old age, not just survive. We are so obsessed with accumulating stuff that we are sinking further and further into debt.

So in Ethiopia they struggle to survive poverty and still practice stewardship in the church while in North America we struggle to survive our debt load and wonder how we are going to give to the church.

Both authors bring us back to the biblical truth that God owns it all and that we’re to be faithful with what we’re entrusted with. We’re to readjust our thinking and say to ourselves, “God owns it all and only wants 10 percent back! Wow!”

This small book, selected for the Global Anabaptist–Mennonite Shelf of Literature, is both educational and practical and would be of value for any church library.

Lloyd Reimer is stewardship representative for the Canadian Conference of MB Churches and lives in Richmond, B.C.