Hold it in Trust – Leadership as Stewardship

AS EACH ONE HAS RECEIVED A GIFT,

USE IT TO SERVE ONE ANOTHER

AS GOOD STEWARDS OF GOD’S VARIED GRACE.

(1 PT 4:10)

Stewardship

(Taken from the Article: Leadership Is Stewardship By Bill Peel)

The Greek word for stewardship, oikonomia, is a compound of two words: oikos, household, and nomos, which means law or rule. In ancient culture, the words used together meant the administration or management of a household

An oikonomos, or steward, was indeed the “ruler of the house,” but he was not the ultimate ruler. In fact, in New Testament times the steward was almost always a slave to the head of the house. Although he was a slave, he was second in command, entrusted to manage the family and affairs. He was in authority as well as under authority. But—and this is the point of this Greek lesson—the authority granted to him was never to be used for his own self-interest. He was to use it to advance the interests of the master to whom he was accountable.

Looking at leadership through the lens of stewardship—authority over people and accountability before God—is the key to understanding what it means to lead from a biblical perspective.

The essence of stewardship implies a two-party proposition. One person owns the resources and the other person is entrusted with the resources. By definition, a steward is accountable to his master for how resources are invested.

Living as a Steward

(Taken from the U.S. Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on Stewardship)

Who is a Christian steward?

One who receives God’s gifts gratefully, cherishes and tends them in a responsible and accountable manner, shares them in justice and love with others, and returns them with increase to the Lord.

Genesis tells us that God placed the first human beings in a garden to practice stewardship there—“to cultivate and care for it” (Gn 2:15). The world remains a kind of garden (or workshop, as some would prefer to say) entrusted to the care of men and women for God’s glory and the service of humankind.

Stewardship is all-encompassing. It provides a place for the simplest individual gesture of kindness as well as stewardship communities working for systemic justice and peace. Stewardship flowing from a personal and communal relationship to Christ holds a particular attraction to people. It is, ultimately, the pull and the power of the Gospel come alive in our times and circumstances.

On this momentous year of celebrating the National Convention of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, we reflect, celebrate and rejoice how the Church has been a steward of Catholic education, and how Catholic education has assumed the mission of evangelization. To do this, the presentation will be done in three parts: