Happy 4th of July!

Lincoln said in a famous address to Congress, “Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history.” I would paraphrase, My fellow Christians, we cannot escape stewardship. Too harsh? My point is, we are all stewards, it comes with the territory of being human. The only question is what type of stewards we will be. It's kind of like the gift of being born a citizen of the United States. That status is our birthright. We choose whether to be active or passive citizens, but we are born citizens. Citizenship may be gift or a burden depending on what we are called to do and how we view that call. The same is true of stewardship. We all have gifts, resources, time, talent, the only question is how and for whom will we use them. We have all been given the Earth and human relationships, the only question is, how will we care for them? 

John Wright shared a bit of church history with me that got me to thinking in a new direction. It seems that the administrative structure of the Methodist Church originally used the term Stewards rather than Administrative Board for its chief administrative body. My initial reaction was we lost something when we adopted a corporate rather than Biblical language for our church. Then a different interpretation came to mind. If there is a small group designated as Stewards, that lets all the rest of us off the hook. If we have a Stewardship Team, do we delegate the stewardship function to them and not take responsibility for our own stewarding?  Out of these thoughts has come the experiment called the Circle of Stewards. Thanks for joining our circle and have a joyful and safe July 4.