The church is God's agency for the exercise of Christian stewardship. Every principle of good service, every impulse toward helpful doing, every consciousness of obligation, every proper exercise of stewardship emanates from the church or from the forces made by the church.

Stewardship an Honored Position.

      Christ was master of the art of illustration. From nature, history, and current events he drew the figure settings in his marvelous messages to men. Every act of his life, as well as every sentence in his sermons, was the effort to make the people understand the dignity of worthy service and the call to co-laborship with him.

      In the age of Christ's personal ministry, stewardship never meant a petty position. It always carried obligation next to that of the crowned head of the commonwealth. So in the parable of the talents and the unjust steward, the strongest possible figure is used to emphasize the fact that unfaithfulness to a trust in the world's work is treason, for the one who has proven disloyal to personal responsibility is high in authority in the royal household.

Some Bible Meanings of Stewardship.

      Elder--In a specific sense the eldership is stewardship, responsible for the dispensing of truth and wise counsel and the exercise of executive direction over the entire Church.

      Bishop--In the bishopric is vested the same heaven-born obligation. So vital is this significant service that certain requirements in character are clearly stipulated: [51]

      1. To be master of his own manhood (Titus 1:7).

      2. To have a determined and tenacious grip on the truth (Titus 1:9).

      3. To be armored with sound doctrine (Titus 1:13-14).

      4. To be one who loves, men and whom men love (Titus 1:8).

      Shepherd--Is an office like unto that of bishop with this exception, the former implies leadership rather than directorship. Shepherd is a stronger figure and more comprehensive. It includes all the essential points of stewardship--overseer, obligation even to the limit of life, a dispenser, all crowned and dignified by example--a going before. Can men and women successfully lead into large service when their own work measure is empty? Can they inspire to sacrificial giving, when they live in luxury themselves? Can they count an atom's weight in turning the wealth of the world into the treasury of missionary and philanthropic service when their barns and pastures and fields and coffers are full and the gates and doors are closed to the appeal of need?

      Minister--Also means steward, steward of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1, 2). What are these mysteries? Can they be analyzed, developed, and dispensed for practical good to the earth family? Many things may be mentioned. Four special ones are suggested:

      1. Life.

      Not mere existence, not a body bulk of flesh and blood and muscle, with breathing, moving, and reproductive functions, but the higher life of good thinking and helpful doing.

      2. Love.

      That "never faileth" (1 Cor. 13). This is the supreme element, God himself. While our eyes are holden and we look out from the house of clay, ultimate comprehension of this mystery cannot be attained. The minister steward by teaching it, by living it, by leadership, by directorship in the church, aids the love mystery to become the real and vital entity in the world's work.

      3. Sacrifice.

      Of Self.--Has anyone ever fully understood why? But does lack of discernment prove nonentity? Nature's laws, which are God's laws, practically decree there can be no life without death, no blessing without giving, and no service bearing the standard seal without sacrifice. The minister steward cannot reveal and dispense the inspiration of this mystery until he lives the mystery in the midst of his people.

      Of Substance.--Another deep mystery, the revealing of which makes every man my brother and every woman my sister, every motherless or needy child my own, every son without a father my son, every daughter alone in the world a member of my family. If my brother needs a keeper, that is a portion of my task. If my sister is lost, I must go to the rescue or my money must help equip the searching party. When the little ones cry for bread, my granary doors burst open and the golden grain must flow speedily to the lips of hungry children.

      4. The Gospel for Others.

      The greatest mystery revealed to the Jews was that the favor of the Father, his gospel, was for the Gentiles (Eph. 3:3-6). For centuries Israel possessed special information, special prophecy, and special agencies for a world-wide service to all the races of men, but had failed in their stewardship. The church to-day possesses the fact of this failure and the complete revelation in Christ of the Father's plan for his people. Why should it be a mystery that the gospel is not only for those of Anglo-Saxon blood, and those through whose veins course the Hebrew current of life, but that it is also for the black man, the brown man, the yellow man, the red man, for the men and women of large opportunity and also for those stunted by tragic and limited environments?

      If I did not believe it is the will of the Father that every man and woman and child is to he told the story of his love, I think I could not believe there is a God. The message of the Master, "Go, go build into the world my life, my love," is the climax evidence of his Messiahship. O Church of Christ, if we go not, the candlestick of promise will be removed from our midst, and we, too, will have failed in our stewardship. The steward of God's mysteries, the minister--and every Christian should be such--is essentially a faith builder (1 Cor. 3:5). Christian life, Christian love, Christian sacrifice, and Christian missions are the four corner stones and the revealer of mysteries that promote worthy stewardship life.

Every Man and Woman and Child a Steward.

      We possess nothing. The silver is the Lord's, the gold also, and the cattle on a thousand hills are his. The seas are wider his control. The land was made [52] by him and is given to us in trust. The power to get wealth is not of ourselves. Time is not our own. Every moment is a trust fund. To waste time is tragic. To use it for no profit is pathetic. To employ it for self when it should be utilized for the growth and power of the church is sin. Even our life--the closest possible proximity to actual personal possession--is an absolute trust. "All souls are mine." "The world is mine and the fulness thereof."

      The bodily form of the human kind signifies stewardship. Man is not a creeping thing with his nostrils to the dust, but he stands erect, with his face to the sun. His hands are not claws to destroy, but can open with benediction to comfort and soothe.

      A Christian steward is given a talent, a commission, and power to execute. Every normal life possesses in some measure these three elements. All such are debtors. Debtorship implies stewardship. Stewardship signifies called to service, not for ourselves but for "others," for "No man liveth unto himself" and no man possesseth unto himself, else with the living and with the possessing he will die not only unto himself but unto the good of the church.

Diversity of Stewardship Talent.

      Every Christian attainment places the person who possesses it under the obligation of stewardship. If you can sing, sing the "Old, Old Story," sing the "Messiah," and "The Peace that Passeth Understanding," sing to the disconsolate, sing something for somebody's good. If the stewardship of speech in but one language is yours, hasten with the message. If you are a master of many dialects, and the body is strong, manifold are your obligations. If you are an artist, contribute the product of your brush to the story of love and the power of the church. If you are a teacher, it is yours to help build the immortal. Never place a doubting thought of God or the eternal verity of things in any human heart. He who does it is criminal to the limit of insatiate cruelty. Better the steel stab than the death blow to faith. If you are a student of nature, react of God in the rocks, the trees and the stars and tell the beautiful story to children and to those whose feet may be slipping away from the truth. If you are a physician, your talent is doubled the moment you enter your Christian stewardship. Next to the minister steward, or collaborating with him, or possibly superior in opportunity to him, is the Christian physician. "Is your father at home?" asked a gentleman of a bright little by who was playing on a doctor's doorstep. "No, sir," was the answer, "he's away." "Where do you think I can find him?" "Well," said the child, thoughtfully, "you've got to look for some place where people are sick, or hurt, or something like that. I don't know where he is, but he's helping somewhere."

      If your talent is money making, you can daily multiply yourself for the uplift of the race. "Money is power." It is a legitimate expression of personal energy. It is mind in material form. It is hand and heart and even soul power, for only creation with soul thought produces values. Money is a part of ourselves. Dare we say we give ourselves when we withhold this supplement to ourselves, the money power, and say, Yes, I will give self, I will do the face to face, personal work, to uplift the fallen, but the gold and the silver I will lay away carefully in a beautifully initialed napkin that when I am gone those who unfold it may know my purpose in life was to move a little piece of marble from its home in the hills and place it on a tiny plat of ground that the world may know I lived, and died.--What then, O God; What then--if you have robbed the bank of God? If you have failed in properly exercising the stewardship of wealth?

Steward a Debtor.

      The steward "does not own his wealth, but he owes it."

      1. To the Government.

      I doubt if one has reached the estate of true citizenship until he has contributed something for the maintenance of the national life--either money, or thought--or has borne arms in the conflict for principles. There is a dignity in tax paying second only to the significance of tithe offering.

      2. To the Church.

      It is a mooted question whether a person can be a member of the church and not contribute for the ministration of the church and for the upkeep of the buildings and equipment. Even before a man has understood and acknowledged his duty to formally accept the leadership of Christ and fellowship in the church, if he locates his home in a land where the principles of the Christian religion make life and home and nation worth the name and insure him against heathendom and [53] cannibalism, he is much beneath the dignity of a true man if he withholds liberal contributions to the church.

      3. To Foreign Missions.

      The local church is first. It must be maintained as the foundation for the home base. As an individual cannot live for himself alone, so the church, if it seeks to simply perpetuate itself locally, must die. It is the law of the natural world. It is equally so of the spiritual world. The door of every nation now stands open for the gospel. God loosened the locks when he knew his church possessed the means adequate to enter. When one billion, two hundred and fifty million people are non-Christian, when over six hundred million have never heard of Christ, when there are thirty million in Japan and sixty million in Africa yet unevangelized, when there are four hundred million in India, China and Central Asia who have never heard a Christian message, when two hundred million Mohammedans are yet to he reached by the gospel, a careful study of the chart of world facts will stir the Christian steward to quick and decisive action for foreign missions.

      4. To Home Missions.

      When cities and towns and villages by the hundreds in our land have never heard the plea of the Disciples of Christ, the plea for Christian union, when many church organizations are without pastoral care, when foreign people at the rate of one every twenty-two seconds are coming to our shores, when Buddhism and Hinduism have erected their altars within our gates and Mohammedanism has her shrines located in the capital city of the center state of our American Commonwealth, when King Alcohol still holds high his hydra head, when the bulwarks of our nation, the sanctity of our homes are threatened by the increased divorces and the inroads of the worse than black plague, it is time for the stewards of wealth and purity and principle to pour into the church and other properly organized channels the sacrifice of self and substance. There was never a better day for courageous effort than right now, never an age when the need of money and men and women of the heroic mold was so great.

      5. To Educational Institutions.

      The great universities in the world are here because there were those who believed in Christ and the church, those who were conscious of the power of a Christian education and recognized the study of life in all its phases, the study of nature in all her aspects, the study of science and philosophy, of literature and logic, together with the study of spiritual forces, are essential in the making of the highest type of life.

      As the church is first and supreme in the Father's plan for the uplift of the races of men, so the Christian stewardship of the church should make the Christian colleges of the land stand first in world-wide purpose, and in cultural and technical study. The maintenance fund should be such as to adequately remunerate Christian specialists, that there may be time for further research. On the other hand, this is also a field where the steward of large mental capacity and pedagogical talent may make his investment for the commonwealth of God without naming a price.

      Here the Christian steward of money or mentality has opportunity to multiply himself a million fold, to project himself into the future, to make his thought have being in the life energies a thousand years hence, to make his money and mind speak and act when his voice is stilled and his earth life is forever past.

      Christian stewardship established in Indianapolis the Missionary Training School, with its purpose to aid in the testing and training of missionaries for the Church of Christ. Such stewardship gave being to Bethany, and Butler, to Hiram, Transylvania, and Drake, to Oklahoma and Texas Christian Universities, to Cotner and Kimberlin Heights, and to every Christian educational institution in the United States and in the lands abroad. Dare anyone say the men and women who gave the money founded these institutions? If so, they had equal co-workers in the teachers and executors who served without salary and gave their best without price or accepted only an existence remuneration. When the honor roll is called, we could name, of such, a list that would reach to the skies.

      6. To Hospitals.

      Jesus spent much time healing the sick and sore bodies of people. He soothed the turbulent spirits of strife and of fear by the health touch of his marvelous power. We cannot minister by miracle, but such as we have we owe to this service of Christian benevolence. People can do without food for a time. Much clothing is not necessarily essential to life, but the sick, need both and more.

      To achieve in the realm of art, to [54] attain success in the business world, to become kings in commerce, to promote great architectural and civil engineering enterprises, to reach the plane of statesmanship, to be permitted to grapple with national and world problems, is success, but there is something greater. To know the human body, to possess the surgeon's skill, the physician's knowledge of life, the nurse's ability to execute orders and administer curative agencies, is success with a deep and emphatic underlining. Blind is the steward of resources who does not see in the sick human body opportunity for the exercise of art, science, and Christian, business, and brotherhood principles. To preserve this body by tender ministry, to build into it more of the Christ compassion, to conserve it for stewardship service to others, is success approximating the supreme. The Master still pleads with his church, heal the sick of my people, and all are mine.

      7. To Social Service.

      This, too, is practical Christianity, or Christianity in practice. Yea, it is Christianity at its task. It is working while we are praying. It is teaching while we are learning. It is doing while we are seeing and where we are seeing. It is service among the needy. It is going about doing good. It is moving forward "in his steps." It means money giving, and large giving. It means consecrated talent for wise distribution. And more, it means brilliant thought and courageous purpose not yet fully attained to propagate the preventive agencies--the purity of Christ and the principles of his institution, the church.

The Christian Steward a Specialist in Finance.

      1. Makes Wise Investments.

      A woman and other members of her family made gifts for the education of Jacob Kenoly. A life, though it tabernacled in a house of black clay and served but a span of three years, alone with God, established a mission station in Africa. Cyrus Hamlin had life and purpose to serve the people of the Ottoman Empire. It took the supplement of a New York merchant's money to make possible the great Robert College at Constantinople. It is said Cyrus Hamlin made the new Turkey. Did he? If so, he had a colaborer in all the task. A young man was asked why he wanted to be a missionary. At once he replied, "I want to help build a nation." Worthy stewards of the church, will you not permit your money to colabor with such a life? There is yet "much land to be possessed," much people to be remade, many riches both temporal and spiritual to be garnered by the steward of Christian finance.

      2. Converts Material Commodities into Mental and Spiritual Energies.

      Gold and silver, bonds and stocks and real estate holdings, have value only as they are contributors to physical, mental, and spiritual forces. Money buys and prepares food and makes and buys books. True knowledge of nature will give an uplift toward God. Fellowship with the Father will build a bond of brotherhood. A sense of brotherhood crowns every man a king. King stands for power. Power increases value. Such values double in quick succession, if with the increase in value there is a corresponding increase in the sense of stewardship of those values. This steward finance specialist is a man of vision, one who sees opportunity. His outreach is speedy and permanent. He builds his money into life, and life is eternal. It is safer than bank vaults and its utility is multiplied in infinite succession.

The Steward Must Make Three Decisions.

      1. Whether He will be True to the Trust.

      No one can decide for him. The pastor and official board of the church may present the needs of the local church and the call to world-wide service. Missionary secretaries and various expert messengers may tell of the millions without God, of the darkness in pagan lands, of vast sections of the earth peopled with his brothers and sisters and no doctor nearer than 700 miles. He may read of these things, but the steward must put his own hand into his own pocket or he may straighten himself and grip an empty hand so tight as to prevent pocket entrance. These crisis moments sometimes mean death to the steward as well as loss to the cause being presented. In such hours, it takes a steward of Christian statesmanship to lead to a wholesome committal of wealth to the cause of good.

      2. When Gifts Should Be Made.

      Here, too, there must be voluntary decision. Each Lord's Day, as God has prospered, a gift should be made for the local work. If for this, why not also for missions abroad--the supreme business for which the church exists? A new knowledge of need should call forth a gift or a pledge. God some way supplements the accumulating, conserving, and [55] economic capabilities of worthy pledgers to a worthy cause, making possible the fulfilment of the obligation. In an emergency call, the steward is stone who is not moved to practical compassion. In leading to the exercise of Christian stewardship, the problem is to awaken a consciousness that the need of the church is a daily emergency. People are dying about us and the church could save them if we would discharge the tasks in our stewardship. Our neighbor is dead in woeful sin. We, too, are dead to duty. Proximity seems to deaden our sensibility of sin. God pity the near-sighted steward as well as the unjust one.

      3. What He Shall Give.

      Like the rich young ruler, the steward may sometimes he called upon to dispense to the absolute and extreme limit of his possessions, e. g., to save his own life. The consciousness of daily toil being essential to daily food and raiment develops athletes in the world's work and restores decadent will and muscle power to successful endeavor.

      "Wealth of the self indulgent rich," says Ruskin, "should be called their ill-th." Failure to discharge the stewardship function produces a congestion that stultifies high thinking and wholesome doing which in the end produces death to the spiritual impulses of life.

      Who will challenge that to save the life of another, even if it he only the earth life, it is the duty of all to give to the limit of the last piece of our possession?

      I plead with my own heart and I plead with every steward in the Church of God, is flesh and blood and body more than the being that, dwells in the human house? Give all if the Master needs it. Give a portion it it is enough.

Failure in Stewardship Means Death.

      Stewardship implies authority, ability, and resources (Matt. 25:14-21). With such wealth of power, kings are wont to be vested. If a person possessing such opportunity, when commissioned to a task, proves traitor, is there anything to do but to declare his commission annulled? If he could speak truth, if he could preach the gospel, if he could help others preach it, if he could establish the principles of Christian stewardship in other lives, if he could throw a life belt to a drowning man, if by the gift of a cup of cold water a noble son could be given back in health to a widowed mother, and will not, is there any law that will prevent paralysis of the arm that refuses to exercise and the heart that stops the pulse beat of response to the call of need?

      Stewards of special power and possessions, what is your obligation? If you can conduct great architectural achievements, if you can create commerce and control finance, your stewardship is boundless, for you control both men and money. For such a one, the call of the King is all you have, all you are, all you will be, all you can do, all you can give is not your own, but is yours only in trust. It belongs to my children, to your brothers. Dispense bountifully, wisely, and systematically.

      If you possess land, if the hills with their ore wealth is yours, if you hold a mortgage on the rivers of oil, if the coal beds lie in your landed estate, if the forests are your possession, and you are a Christian, O man of God, how tremendously wonderful are your opportunities, and how just will be the retribution of disaster to you if you fail in your obligation!

      Have you pastures and flocks, are the cattle and sheep on western and southern ranches yours, are the vast wheat fields or the smaller plots of production, and the corn and cotton acreages your source of income? Consider who made the sun and the soil, who stored the winds with the alchemy of life and growth, and out in the field or forest, some day, alone with God and the stars to look down at you, and the company of only the birds to remind you of the sparrow story, look at yourself, then look at India and China, at Tibet and Turkey. Raise your eyes to a vision of the continent even yet as "dark as midnight." Behold the isles of the sea, all waiting for what you call give them or can help send them, and if you are not stirred to the exercise of your stewardship, you are on the verge of defeat and your life's Waterloo is inevitable.

Success in Stewardship Means Life.

      Jesus had no personal possession but his human life. Have you ever asked why Christ should die? His poverty in world-wealth left nothing but his life to give. In the midst of universal selfishness, there was no way to establish Christian stewardship but by example, so the sacrifice was made ,and not only does he still live, but the impulse of his life shows us how to give and how to live. Give effort for the joy of somebody and the blue sky of Heaven will shine above you. Give thought for the relief of the suffering [56] and your own pain will be forgotten. Give comfort to the broken-hearted and the self-burden will grow lighter. Give love and compassion and even the physical heart action will double its power. Give food to the hungry and a home to the homeless and God will increase the larder. Give time to think and plan and give and do for the church's local and world enterprises and you will live a decade in a day. The windows of knowledge and conception, vision and large living, open only to the faithful steward.

      Give all for Christ and the church.

[DH 51-57.]