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Bondage vs. Freedom

“Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – Jesus in John 8:31–36

Part 1 – Preparing for the Journey

Five Leadership Lessons

In the early years of my life as a leader, if you had asked me for a scripture that epitomized the leadership ideal, I would likely have pointed you to Nathan’s directive to King David: “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you” (2 Samuel 7:3).

In speaking of Jesus’s incarnation, Paul tells us that Jesus “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). The words “no reputation” are especially powerful here.

The Bible does not say that Jesus became a man of bad reputation, or questionable reputation, but simply of no reputation. That means reputation, image, prestige, prominence, power, and other trappings of leadership were not only devalued, but they were also purposefully dismissed.

Jesus became such a man. Not by default or accident, but by intention and design. And it was only in this form that he could serve, love, give, teach, and yes, lead.

True Christian leadership is an ongoing, disciplined practice of becoming a person of no reputation, and thus, becoming more like Christ in this unique way.

Henri Nouwen refers to this way as resisting the temptation to be relevant. Nouwen says, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”

Lesson #1. Anointed versus Appointed

Few Christian leaders of today were anointed before they were appointed. We have mostly employed the business model of doing careful searches looking for Christian leaders whom we can appoint to office. We check their credentials, put them through rigorous interviews, and even give them psychological tests before we make the critical appointment. Once in place, we then ask God to bless their work. The biblical evidence seems to indicate that God selects leaders in the opposite order. Samuel anointed David before appointing him king.

David was “God’s man at God’s time.”

We like it when candidates present themselves as confident, qualified, and competent to do the job well. Are we willing to prioritize this admission of utter dependence as a critical factor in our hiring decisions?

With God’s anointing comes what every leader seeks: God’s power and presence. There is a special blessing bestowed on God’s anointed. God’s anointed will do anything God asks—anything. They will seek God’s will with passion.

Anointing begets surrender, and, as we will see later, surrender is the disposition of the heart of the steward leader.

Lesson #2: Fighting the Need to Increase

When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking in his presence, he made a declaration.

Nouwen is even more direct, “The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross… Here we touch the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future. It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest.”

The “owner-leader” is not real leadership, but a counterfeit that contributes to our increase and expands our kingdom. This type of leadership does a terrible disservice to our people, leaving them uninvolved and underdeveloped. It wastes resources and limits our ministry, all under the guise of strong leadership and the use of our God-given talents for “getting things done.”

The test question is, “Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

Steward leaders are stewards over the people and organizations they serve. They cultivate the people they lead in pursuit of the success of the organization. Steward leaders empower their people, give away authority, value and involve others, seek the best in and from their people, and constantly lift others up, push others into the limelight, and reward those they lead.

Max De Pree’s famous definition is worth repeating: “The first responsibility of the leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the leader is a servant.”

The call of the steward leader is a call to a lifestyle of an ever-decreasing thirst for authority, power, and influence, where our quest for reputation is replaced by confidence in the power of God’s anointing.

Lesson #3: Being and Doing

We are people who believe we were created in the image of a triune God. We believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons, yet one God. And therefore, we understand that relationship defines us as image bearers of this triune God. We learn that to be God’s people, we must focus on who we are as people in relationship.

A proper understanding of our creation in the imago Dei also teaches us that what is most important to God is not what we do, but who we are. Secular leadership experts are waking to the fact that the key to leadership effectiveness is self-awareness.

As steward leaders, we must be engaged in a constant process of self-evaluation and repentance.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). (Consider your most powerful leadership tool from my first blog post here.)

The greatest tools for an effective steward leader are a mirror and a group of allies and accountability partners who will make sure we are looking into it with clarity and focus.

Lesson #4: Leadership is a Miracle

We must approach leadership in dependent humility. The sole responsibility of the steward leader is joyous, responsive obedience. Godly leadership is the miracle of God’s use of our earthen vessels for the glorious work of His kingdom.

Lesson #5: Seeking the Right Applause

Rodin notes that a bookmark he carries reads, “It doesn’t matter if the world knows, or sees or understands, the only applause we are meant to seek is that of nail-scarred hands.”

As public figures, we receive both the undue criticism for the failures of our institutions and the unmerited praise for their successes.

To use a variation on a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, some leaders worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there, some forget themselves into immortality.

God only asks one thing of steward leaders: that we seek with all our hearts to know His will and respond with obedience and joy. Rodin reflected on an experience before he assumed one of his leadership positions. He spent a couple of hours with a mentor, who offered this advice, “Scott, in whatever you do, always strive to be a man that God can trust.”

Becoming a Steward Leader of No Reputation

Steward leaders are faithful stewards first, and it is as these God-honoring stewards that they are called to lead. For those who see themselves as leaders first, the temptations to stray in leadership are enormous.

The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints.

What Is a Steward Leader?

Let’s start by defining this important title. Simply put, a steward leader is first a faithful steward who is then called to lead.

Most leadership books start from the question, “What do I need to do to be a good leader?”

The problem is not with the quality of the leadership techniques they teach; it is with the assumption that leadership is mostly about what we do and only partially about who we are. That’s where Rodin departs from the common way of teaching about leadership and takes a different route. The process Rodin shares does not start with your life as a leader, but with your life as a follower of Jesus.

The steward leader is distinct from servant-leadership. Both are biblical, but too often, we can respond to the command to be a servant-leader with the application of behaviors that make us look like servants. When we ask the question, “How would a servant-leader lead?”, we have already missed the mark. Put another way, we can practice the techniques of servant-leadership, but never believe in our hearts that we are truly servants.

As we let the Holy Spirit transform our understanding of the life of a faithful steward and as we commit to go deeper with Jesus on that journey, we will be prepared to lead in a more faithful and powerful way than ever before.

Jesus came that we may know abundance; thieves come to steal. Jesus comes to build up; thieves come to destroy.

Embrace the journey to steward leadership as a series of seven movements:

From owner to steward
From two-kingdom bondage to one-kingdom freedom
From spiritual stagnancy to deep intimacy with Christ
From distortion to a balanced understanding of our identity
From seeing people as means to valuing them as ends
From complacency in how we use God’s resources to nurturing his abundance
From apathy to embracing the battle as a steward warrior

The Most Important Question a Leader Will Ever Ask

What one piece of advice would Rodin give himself as a bright-eyed and hopeful twenty-two-year-old college graduate? Simply this: “Be careful how you define success, Scott, because it will drive everything you do.”

In his forty-plus years of leadership, consulting, and coaching, Rodin has come to believe this is the single most important question we will ever ask ourselves as leaders. How do you define success?

The first way we can measure success is by way of the outcomes of our life and work. We are successful when we have a good job, make a large salary, build a strong marriage, raise kids who are successful, develop a strong retirement account, live in a nice home, go fun places on vacation, build a successful business or ministry, earn the admiration and respect of others, and the list goes on and on. These measurements of success all have to do with what we are able to produce and measure—these are the metrics of wealth, power, influence, impact, and reputation. This definition of success drives us into a lifelong pursuit of those things the world tells us will determine our value and provide us our happiness and satisfaction.

When we shift our definition of success to metrics of ownership and control, the enemy has us on a treadmill that he will use to kill, steal, and destroy the abundant life Christ came to give us. How many Christian leaders do you know who have faced burnout, moral failings, ethical downfalls, and leadership failure?

The other choice is to define success by who you are and who you are becoming.

The choice for faithfulness as our driving definition of success is a choice for hope, a choice of promise, a choice of freedom, and a choice of a life of honest engagement, loving our neighbor, lavish generosity, and unapologetic truth.

Part 2 – The Seven Keys

Experiencing the Freedom of the Steward Leader

As you apply the keys that unlock these shackles, you will begin to experience more of the free and abundant life Jesus promised.

Key #1 – It’s All God’s

Steward leaders understand that their lives are not their own. They are stewards of every area of life and resist the temptations to play the role of master.

We are all on the journey of becoming more faithful stewards. The first step is daily stepping off our thrones and surrendering everything back to God, the true owner. It starts with a simple prayer before we set foot out of bed, “It’s all yours, Lord, it is not mine. It never was. I trust you with my life. Now let me live this day for you, as a faithful steward of all that you have entrusted to me.”

Key #2 – Developing the Heart of a One-Kingdom Leader

If we look at the first two chapters of Genesis, we’ll find that we were created for whole relationships that reflect the image of God on four levels: our relationship with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with creation.

Our purpose is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. This is our first and highest calling and joy. Worship, Sabbath rest, devotion, prayer, fasting, study, praise, and presence are ways in which we fulfill our purpose in our relationship with God. Intimacy is not something we create; it is the result of total surrender that allows God to do something in us and for us. God draws us near as we submit ourselves to him.

The abundant life on the second level is ours when our identity remains secure in Jesus Christ. We are a child of God. That is the primary and determining source of our self-worth.

The abundant life on the third level comes from our relationships with others. We were created for relationships. Just as God is triune in his very nature, so we were created to find meaning in our existence in community. If we were created for relationship with our neighbor, our purpose is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

The abundant life on the fourth level is experienced as we live out our status as caretakers of the created world. From Genesis, we see that we were created primarily for this activity. The first task given to God’s creation was to tend the garden (Genesis 1:28–30).

If we were created for a relationship with creation, our purpose is to live in harmony with creation: to value it, to tend it, and to take care of it.

Lost in Sin

We know that when sin entered into the world, it had a devastating impact on our relationship with God on all four levels.

In the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, our relationship with God was fatally disrupted. We also experienced the loss of relationship with ourself. Adam and Eve lost their primary purpose in life—tending the garden, loving one another, and fellowshipping freely with God as His beloved creation. Since the fall, the central theme of the history of humanity became our search to find again our purpose and meaning in life.

With sin came the rise of enmity with our neighbor. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent. The very next story that comes after the fall is of Cain’s killing of Abel.

Finally, in this original sin, we see the rise of conflict in our relationship with creation. After the fall, we redefined “dominion” as domination, “rule over” became own and control, and “subdue” became the justification to exploit.

Paul tells us that although one transgression brought sin into the world, how much more the blood of Christ has covered all sin (Romans 5:9–15).

Jesus’s life demonstrated the right relationship we seek with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.

Key #3 – Intimacy with Christ Is Our Highest Calling

Steward leaders seek intimacy with God as their highest calling. They prioritize activities that nurture this intimacy and reject the temptation to allow urgent matters to rob them of it. They follow God’s leading wherever it may take them and the ministry.

There is a battle going on for the heart of every Christian leader. Jesus wants our total dependence on Him. The enemy wants to sell us the idea that self-reliance is a surer way to happiness and success.

It’s likely all of us have sympathy for Martha, feeling like at times we have been left alone to do the work God calls us to carry out. Mary sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to him while her sister runs around.

A radical teaching found in both Luke and Philippians reflects the power of the temptation in our lives to compromise when it comes to this one thing that is needed. Everything in our life, everything, flows from this one thing, this first thing, this all-important and all-encompassing thing. Knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord will be, in the end, all that really matters in life and leadership. Everything else we think, say, and do will reflect the level of this knowing. Therefore, knowing must have our first, primary, and unequivocal allegiance. Jesus tells us that if we will seek him and his kingdom above all else, all the other things that would otherwise distract us will be taken care of. Do you believe that?

As the proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The journey of the faithful steward and steward leader is a long journey, and it requires companions who love us enough to hold us accountable.

Key #4 – Our Identity Is Secure in Jesus Christ

Steward leaders are secure in their identities in Jesus Christ. They stand firm on that certainty and reject the temptation to desire affirmation or applause from any other source. This positions them to absorb criticism and deflect praise.

Picture yourself standing in the middle of a path with both feet firmly on the ground, facing straight ahead, and fixing your eyes on your destination. When you keep to the center of the path and don’t become distracted, you can work your way through obstacles, around rocks, through streams, and up steep grades, all without losing your focus on your destination. When our eyes are focused on Jesus Christ as our sole identity, then all that the world can offer us will not cause us to veer from the path.

So, Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. (Numbers 20:9–11) As a frustrated leader, Moses took matters into his own hands and provided his people what they wanted, water. But rather than trusting God to provide, Moses became the provider for his people—a role that belongs to God and God alone. Moses was hailed the savior and deliverer as the children of Israel drank fully from the water that flowed from the rock. But that was not Moses’s calling or work. Moses found himself off the path, having fixed his gaze someplace other than on his trust in God alone. And it cost Moses and the nation of Israel dearly.

Remember, the enemy wants us anywhere but solidly in the center of the road to which God has called us.

There is a sweet spot in the life of a steward leader. It is that place of stability, balance, and confidence where we are in the center of the path to which God has called us, our eyes fixed fully on him, and our stride steady and sure in his direction.

Look for the patterns in your life as a leader that may indicate that you have veered off the path and tied your identity to some source other than Christ.

Here are four musts to start following immediately:

We must reject the temptation of pride, which is to desire affirmation or applause from any other source. Where are you looking for applause as a leader?
We must reject the temptation to tie our reputation or identity to anything other than who we are in Jesus Christ.
We must distinguish between who we are in Christ and the roles He may call us to play in life and leadership.
We must pray for God to set us free to find our identity in Him alone, so that we are able to encourage others and lift others up.

Begin each day affirming the balance God seeks in your self-image and pray not to be pulled in either direction. Surrender your identity back to God each day, refuse to play the owner, and take on the mantle of the steward of every area of your life.

Key #5 – People Are Ends and Not Means

Steward leaders see those they lead and serve as fellow pilgrims. They shun the temptation to use others to further their own agendas. Consequently, they encourage the personal and spiritual growth of those they lead and with whom they serve.

Owner-leaders see people as either stepping-stones to be used on their way to building their own kingdoms or obstacles to that same kingdom-building pursuit. They are two sides of the same coin. This may sound harsh, but unless we drive the owner-leader temptation from our leadership, we will inevitably fall into the desire to control others for our own advantage. Whether we see people as means to our ends, or as obstacles to our pursuit of those ends, much is at stake when we choose to carry this heavy chain.

We will not make the shift from “relationships as means” to “relationships as ends” until we are personally set free.

The key to our freedom is to look beyond our own needs, because God is our provider. If we are confident in God’s provision, if our identity is secure in Him, then we are free to invest in others. We will see them, like ourselves, as someone on a journey to experience greater freedom and joy.

As leaders, if we concentrated more on helping our employees or fellow workers experience the abundant life in Christ, we would see our places of work flourish as never before. This means seeing them as God sees them. It calls us to steward every relationship and every interaction as gifts. It requires that God cultivate in us the awareness that everyone around us are fellow travelers. Here are three ways to live this out:

Pray that God would use you to help each person you encounter along your way in their journey of becoming more faithful stewards.
Resist the temptation to use others to further your own agendas.
Die to your need to be needed, to always be right, and to have the last word.

As it says in Romans 15, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.”

Key #6 – All Resources Are Gifts from an Abundant God

Steward leaders regard all resources as gifts from God. They resist the temptation to hoard or waste them. Instead, they put them to work consistent with instructions in God’s word and the leading of the Holy Spirit, and they do this for God’s glory.

There are three temptations we face as leaders.

1. The temptation to be our own provider.

This is the norm in a world that celebrates independence and rewards those who are self-made, financially successful leaders. We are taught from a young age that we are to look out for ourselves, be responsible and provide for our own needs, and later, provide for the needs of our family.

It effectively cuts God out of the picture. When we see ourselves as the true provider, we will be thrown back into a mode of self-reliance, which results in our leadership becoming our work, done our way, and for our glory.

In 2 Chronicles 26:16, King Uzziah’s pride and fame were growing, and so was his self-reliance. “But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction.” In Psalm 147:10–11, we are reminded what the Lord values and what He does not: “He does not delight in the strength of the horse; He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man. The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear Him, In those who hope in His mercy.”

The prophet Jeremiah warned against self-reliance in chapter 17 verse 5: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD.’” The prophet Hosea warned likewise: “‘You have plowed wickedness; You have reaped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, because you trusted in your own way, in the multitude of your mighty men’” (Hosea 10:13). These are just a few of so many examples and warnings in scripture about the downfall of relying on our own strength instead of on God’s power and provision.

2. The temptation for misplaced security.

This second temptation is all about trust. As followers of Jesus, we will always be asked to put our full trust and security in Him. As leaders of organizations, businesses, churches, and ministries, we are constantly challenged to provide security for the organizations we lead and the people we serve.

3. The temptation to view God’s resources through the lens of scarcity and not abundance.

We live in a world that is motivated by what we lack. Our desire to accumulate wealth, fame, and power are driven by the conviction that whatever we have, whatever God has provided us today, is not enough. The secret to happiness is…more.

The enemy uses this scarcity mindset to breed in us a whole array of bondages, including:

Envy: Others have more
Fear: What if I lose what I have?
Drivenness: Having more is the answer to my problems

Having rejected the temptation to play the owner, we can trust God to be our provider and handle His resources with integrity and grace. This includes our time, our skills, and our finances. It also includes our care for God’s creation. All of these flow easily and freely from the heart of a steward leader.

Reflection and Prayer

Begin each morning submitting your time, talents, and resources to God’s work. Pray for the heart and vision to lead a lifestyle that reflects a love and care for God’s creation.

Key #7 – We Must Be Prepared for the Spiritual Battle

Steward leaders recognize the spiritual battle they are in as they strive to lead as faithful stewards in a world of people playing the role of master. They speak the truth, which sets people free from bondage so they may experience abundant life.

The battle we fight as steward warriors in four areas of relationships is being waged right in front of us every day. We don’t have to go looking for this conflict—it is brought to our door and thrown in our face almost constantly. From the attacks on our intimacy with God to assaults on our self-image, to the enmity between us and our neighbor, and to a gnawing sense of anxiety and urgency regarding money, maintaining our freedom as a steward leader requires daily vigilance. If we let down our guard for a moment, the old nature within us will rise up and entice us to play the owner once again.

The great preacher and theologian Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, as recounted by David Jeremiah in Turning Points: Finding Moments of Refuge in the Presence of God, “A man’s life is always more forcible than his speech. When men take stock of him, they reckon his deeds as dollars and his words as pennies. If his life and doctrine disagree, the mass of onlookers accept his practice and reject his preaching.”

Victory Begins with Surrender

We can summarize these seven keys with this one powerful statement: Steward leaders have learned that victory begins with surrender. They set aside the temptation of self-reliance and take on the mantle of a leader of no reputation. Only after surrendering can a steward lead effectively.

“It’s all God’s.” This is the cry of joyful surrender that sets us free.

This one truth of the power of surrender can be read back into everything we have said:

It’s all God’s, and we are called to surrender our desire to play the owner and embrace our role as the faithful steward set free to lead.
We are one-kingdom people, and we must surrender the role of lord over our own second kingdom and place everything under the one lordship of Jesus Christ.
We are given the gift of intimacy with God in Christ, and we must surrender the insatiable drive we have to be doers and allow God to free us to serve as steward leaders.
We are given the gift of confidence, and we must surrender our pride that would have us find our identity and freedom in anything but in Christ alone.
We are given the gift of presence with our neighbor, and we must surrender the desire to use our people as means to our own ends and be set free to see them as Christ sees them.
We are given the gift of nurture of creation, and we must surrender the deceptive ideas that we find security in earthly things or rule creation for our own gain and instead become the caretakers that God created us to be.
We are called into the great battle for freedom, and we will only be victorious if we fully surrender our will and ways to God, allowing him to work through us to set others free.

Reflection and Prayer

May the Lord of freedom be your Lord and deliverer, your strength, and your comfort for the battle that lies ahead. And every day may you know the peace that comes from the unchained life and the joy that flows from the heart that is genuinely free.

Part 3: Your Personal Battle Plan

A Tale of Two Spirals

Upward spirals allow us to build on our experiences in an ever more positive and progressive way toward the achievement of ultimate goals. Downward spirals feed on each other in an ever increasingly destructive way, leading to failure.

Both spirals begin at the same place. They start with our decision to view life through the lens of either an owner or a steward. These spirals begin for us every day, every morning, as we look out at our life and the demands of our leadership roles and make the decision whether we will serve in them as owners or stewards.

The Downward Spiral

The first step along the path of the downward spiral is this attitude of an owner-leader—looking to ourselves and others for answers and solutions to the problems and challenges we face.

Self-reliance is the default of the owner-leader. This sets us on a course of doing our work our way, even if we believe that it’s ultimately for God’s glory.

Self-reliance will always inhibit our ability to cultivate deep intimacy with Christ. It will throw us back on ourselves to get to work and solve problems on our own.

The next step down this spiral is to define success in terms of the accomplishment of our work. There’s that term again, our work. An ownership mindset built upon self-reliance will define success as what we are able to accomplish using metrics of tangible growth and worldly success. Having lost our sense of intimacy with Christ, this misplaced definition of success is able to overwhelm us and consume everything we do.

Here is the downward spiral to this point: an ownership mindset cultivates an attitude of self-reliance, which robs us of intimacy with Christ, focuses success on accomplishment, and ties our identity to what we do, rather than who we are.

Owner-leaders then look to all the resources around them and ask how they can be used to help them achieve success. Whether it be time, the talents and skills of people around them, financial resources, or even the creation itself, all these will be seen by owner-leaders as resources at their disposal to help them achieve what they must achieve to maintain their identity and prop up their self-worth.

Issues of money, time, and the skills of the people around you will be sources of stress and conflict. Decisions in each of these areas will be made according to bottom line results and return on investment. Everything will be measured by your definition of success externally and your need for the applause of the people around you and recognition for accomplishments for your identity internally.

People in the downward spiral may end up asking, “How did I get here?” They’re looking for one bad decision or one hurtful experience for the answer. However, they can retrace their steps back up the spiral to that point where they viewed their life through the lens of an owner and took the next steps toward self-reliance, leading them to the most damaging step on this journey: the loss of intimacy with Christ. From that point, the treacherous journey down this spiral is almost inevitable.

The Upward Spiral

“It’s all God’s.” This is the morning prayer of the steward leader.

By declaring His lordship over everything, we surrender the entirety of life and every second of our day as leaders to be used for his purposes and his glory.

If everything belongs to God and if our driving passion is to faithfully steward what is His, then we will willingly adopt a posture of prayer to ask the true owner how He would have us live our day. Prayer, scripture, and devotion are now the fuel with which we can produce true fruit for the kingdom of God.

Steward leaders carry out their work according to a 1 Corinthians 3 formula. In that text, Paul says, “I plant, Apollos waters, but God brings the increase.” Steward leaders understand that they are called to plant and water with excellence, with faithfulness, and with joy.

Having proclaimed that everything belongs to God, when steward leaders look at the resources of time, the talents of others, the financial resources God gives them, and the created world, they submit them to Him and seek guidance for the way He would have them invest these in His work. They resist the temptation to shift their security to what they have accumulated or their reliance on their own strength and abilities for success.

Open your hands up and raise them up to God and say out loud over and over again, “All that I have and all that I am is yours, Lord. The whole of my life, it all belongs to you. I surrender it back to you. Grant me, Lord, the heart of a steward.”

Remember, your life is His, your business is His, your church is His, your ministry is His, your marriage is His, your children are His, your health is His, your future is His, your reputation is His, and your money is His—it’s all His!

Five Commitments of a Steward Leader

May God bless you richly as you take these next steps in your journey of becoming a steward leader.

1. Commitment to One-Kingdom Living

Discipline: “I will pray each day to die to the need and desire to control, step off my throne, and rise again as a free and faithful steward.”

2. Commitment to Intimacy With God

Discipline: “I will pray each day that God would reveal to me the next deeper step He is calling me to take in my relationship with Him and grant me the courage and faith to take it.”

3. Commitment to Self-Image in Christ

Discipline: “I will begin each day affirming the balance God seeks in my self-image and pray not to be pulled in either direction. I will surrender my identity in my job back to God each day, refuse to play the owner, and take on the mantle of the steward of my position.”

4. Commitment to Presence with My Neighbor

Discipline: “I will begin each day with a prayer that God would enable me to see my neighbors and coworkers as He sees them. I will ask for the heart to join them on their journey and be used by God to bless, encourage, and challenge them in ways that are in line with His will for them.”

5. Commitment to Steward of Creation

Discipline: “I will begin each morning submitting my time, talents, and resources to God’s work. I will pray for the heart and vision to lead a lifestyle that reflects a love and care for God’s creation.”

Closing Thoughts

You cannot walk this journey alone. Isolation, self-assurance, and a lack of transparency lie at the heart of most all leadership failures. As you take this journey of becoming a steward leader, make sure you submit to the accountability of others who understand your goals and will help you see your blind spots, challenge bad assumptions, and encourage you at every step. This is a serious battle, and we cannot fight it alone. What is at stake in our Christian ministries and churches is not just missional effectiveness, but transformational witness.

This final admonition points once again to the damage that can be done by the owner-leader. If you are attempting to lead while in bondage to the need to control, you will fail. Your organization will falter and you will do damage to the witness of Jesus Christ in this world.

The great church father Irenaeus proclaimed that the glory of God is in man fully alive, “Yahweh is looking for those whose eyes are looking back toward heaven, those with whom the Spirit can make eye contact.”

We would add to Irenaeus’s quote, “The glory of the kingdom of God is the leader who is completely free.” Through such a leader, God can do great things for the kingdom. And chief among them is the consistent work of a community of faithful, God-honoring stewards who bear witness to the world of the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The result of leading as a steward leader is a community fully alive. To God be the glory!

The Steward Leader Prayer

Lord, forgive my rush to perform. It has distanced me from true intimacy with you;

Lord, forgive the imbalance that I have allowed to take hold in my understanding of who I am in you;

Lord, forgive my use of relationships for my own means;

Lord, forgive my poor use of time and my lack of care for your wonderful creation;

Grant me a heart that daily hungers and thirsts for authentic intimacy with you;

Help me see myself as you see me and give me deep contentment with that view;

Grant me a passion to love my neighbor and a willing heart to be present with them;

Grant me the wisdom to use my time, talents, and resources to build your kingdom and the heart of a true steward of your beautiful creation.

In the name of the one who sets us free, Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.