00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 512 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. I'm Jeff Brown from the Read to lead podcast challenging you to reach true success in business and in life through consistent and intentional reading. One way to be inspired to success is to listen to this the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer. So I ask you this, What is your definition of stewardship? I'd encourage you if you've got one, email it to me even if it's the same one. And you think, Oh, everyone has this definition.
00:00:42 I can tell you there's probably some nuance and some difference in your definition that maybe I've never heard before. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired Stewardship podcast will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And today, spiritually foundation episode about impacting the world.
00:01:27 I talk with you about some of my favorite definitions that folks have shared with me this year. On what stewardship is why I asked this question of everyone and why for me, this one question and its answer filters so much of my life. Have you been following my podcast for awhile? Then you've noticed that as I've started these Saturday night specials, and throughout the years I've talked to different people. One of the things that's kind of come out of these conversations I've begun to ask people much more explicitly.
00:02:02 What is their definition of stewardship? And I wanted to call out a few of those definitions. I'm not gonna play a round-up of every single one of those answers, at least not in this particular episode. But I wanted to call out a few of those answers and talk to you about why this is a question that I ask and why I use this as a filter. And so this first answer that I wanted to share came from Cliff Ravenscraft, and this is a portion of his answer. If you if you want to,
00:02:34 you can go back to the Saturday night Episode three that was released back on August 24th and listen to that entire interview.
00:02:44 But listen here to Cliff's answer, and then I'll talk a little bit about it. But for me,
00:02:49 stewardship simply means being a good steward of the resource is that God has given you all right, that every everything you have belongs to God and,
00:03:00 you know, its I don't necessarily believe that I'm gonna be held to an account of this. I'm a firm believer on the gray side of things where I totally screwed things up.
00:03:09 But at the same time, I do want to be a good steward of all. Resource is, by the way,
00:03:14 that's not just financially for me. It's certainly financially, but I want to be a good steward of my time.
00:03:20 I want to be good steward of my physical body. I want to be good steward of my mind.
00:03:25 I want to be good steward of everything that God's given me. So if you listen to that entire interview,
00:03:30 you'll remember that one of the things that Cliff talked about was this interface between mind and body, how his health and the way he viewed his health had changed and how that had impacted him and notice for him.
00:03:44 When he called out his answer about stewardship, he mentioned health as one of those. Resource is, you know,
00:03:50 I talk a lot about time, talent and treasures. So why is it that health comes out as a piece for him?
00:03:57 And I just focus on time, talent and treasures? Well, first off, to me, talent would include things like physical health because of you aren't physically healthy than you can't actually execute on the things that you are called to do and live out your calling.
00:04:12 But the truth is, I don't call it out explicitly, because that's just not an area that, historically I focused on is a resource.
00:04:21 And when Cliff called that out, it kind of challenged my own thinking a little bit and maybe go wait a minute.
00:04:27 Physical health. That's actually something that I probably need to pay more attention to. You know, as I've gotten older,
00:04:34 I've I've gotten a little bit ah, little bit of out of shape and a little bit of of belly and these sorts of things that I've noticed that and I need to focus.
00:04:43 So in 2020 guess what Some of my goals that I'm building this year are focusing on that area of physical health.
00:04:51 So these next two answers come from Robert Farrington, who was on a Saturday Night Special Episode four, which came from the August 31st and from Bra Berger,
00:05:06 who was on Episode 12 released on October 26th. And both of them Talk about family and kids is being part of their definition of stewardship.
00:05:18 But I want you to listen to the difference between Roberts answers and robs, and then we'll talk about that.
00:05:25 So here's Roberts answer for me like you know, family is very important to me and families first. And so,
00:05:30 like, I think about this all the time. Like, how do I educate my sigh of young kids?
00:05:34 So my son six my daughters to have my wife at home and so that that's why I like it's important to me to,
00:05:41 like, teach them the right and Here's Rob's. So the meeting for me has changed over time. O.
00:05:47 R been added to, I suppose, maybe a better way to put it for my wife and I we we focus on charities that help Children all right.
00:05:59 So we've we've been apart of charities that help say, uh, one charity in particular, that helps teenage girls or young women who have had some difficulties in life from a variety of different reasons but helps them kind of rebuild their lives.
00:06:17 Notice how they both mentioned kids and families, but with a very different focus, because there are different points in their life.
00:06:26 You know, Rob is retired and has run several large businesses, and he's now focused on sort of that giving and charity aspect why Robert has young kids at home and is looking at how he can build his own family.
00:06:41 Legacy it, by the way. It's not that one of these is good and the others bad or one is right and the others wrong.
00:06:47 Either. It's just different focuses because they're different points in their life. Next, I want to share the definition that was given by any Olsen released back on October night,
00:07:01 teeth from Episode 11 of the Saturday night specials, and Amy calls out and talks about something that I believe is,
00:07:10 well, where stewardship is tied into our calling. Listen to that, but I really believe that all of us have been uniquely gifted by God.
00:07:18 So we've been given a city of talents and gifts, and then we have been throughout life, given a set of resource is time money.
00:07:26 So we these are things that we've been gifted by God and we are stewarding what God has given us within the limits of our time,
00:07:33 within the limits of our research resource is with what's critical for leadership or ministry, whether you're informal ministry rolls or whether you are leading in an organization or whether you are a stay at home mom or whether you are whatever it is that you're doing,
00:07:49 you have been given gifts and talents and have the opportunity to represent who got is in the world where her your notice again.
00:07:57 That Annie is tying it into this idea of resource is and taking care of our resource is, but she's tying it into a larger idea of how this is connected to our calling.
00:08:11 And the truth is for me, that's a lot of why I work on this definition internally of stewardship and how it plays a role for me.
00:08:21 I want to play one last definition, and this one is from Ryan Ingle Stone, who's a therapist who was on the show back in the Saturday night special Number five,
00:08:31 released back on September 7th. Listen to his definition, yes, so for me as a therapist, it's so sort of means,
00:08:39 um, taking care and taking seriously the role that people are generous enough to allow me toe have in their life.
00:08:48 And that comes in a lot of different forms. Um, there pops like wanna one, my podcast.
00:08:54 It's if people are taking time out of their day toe. Listen to us. Talk about mental health,
00:08:59 a very serious topic. I want to take that seriously, and I want to honor you know, people's experience and again notice how he's calling out how this impacts his own calling.
00:09:12 In his own career, he's not looking at stewardship here as something that's explicitly religious or nonreligious, but rather in how it impacts him and threw him how it impacts the wider world of his clients and those that come to see him.
00:09:30 And there were a ton of great definition shared by people this year, and I've really enjoyed hearing them,
00:09:36 but for me, this answer to this question this idea of what is stewardship. It becomes sort of a filter that I use throughout the year and throughout my life.
00:09:49 It changes it different phases in my life. You know, when I when my son was very young Ah,
00:09:55 lot of my stewardship focus was on him. Now he's still at home, and I still definitely focus a lot of my energy and attention on him.
00:10:03 But at the same time, it's changed. And now a lot of my focus is on How can I build my business and the legacy around that?
00:10:11 How am I using these resource is to develop the calling that I feel that I have right now, and my point to this is it's not that you have a definition of stewardship.
00:10:21 I mean, there's the definition that you can look up in Webster's Dictionary, and we've talked about that way back in the very beginning of this podcast.
00:10:28 But the truth is for me, this idea this answer to this question. What is stewardship to you,
00:10:34 and how has it impacted your life becomes a filter for me. So when I began to think about things for this coming year,
00:10:42 are they fitting that larger definition of using my time, my talent and my treasures to do what I've been called to do.
00:10:55 And as I do that things begin to change. I began, I've adapted. My podcast is different Now.
00:11:01 If you've been listening for a while, you've noticed. I'm asking different questions. I'm inviting different people on.
00:11:07 I'm even structurally doing longer episodes now, and I'm beginning to bring in other a guess that I would not have brought on by back at the beginning because I didn't think they fit at that time.
00:11:19 But now is I begun to refine my focus and notice that what I'm really doing is helping other people master these areas of their life so that they can build a life giving business of their dreams so that they can go out and do the thing that God has made them to do.
00:11:38 It's widened out and change what I'm doing in the podcast. It's changing what I'm doing in the business.
00:11:43 It's changing how I'm doing and spending my time day today when I'm working on things. Basically, it begins to shift all of the different components of my life.
00:11:56 It's changed the kinds of goals that I'm setting for this year because of that filter of making sure that I'm really mastering and using my time,
00:12:08 my talent and my treasures to the best of my ability. Today I'm mastering those resource is not for my glory but for God's.
00:12:20 So I ask you this. What is your definition of stewardship? I'd encourage you if you've got one,
00:12:26 email it to me, even if it's the same one. And you think, Oh, everyone has this definition,
00:12:31 I can tell you there's probably some nuance and some difference in your definition that maybe I've never heard before.
00:12:38 So shoot me an email at Scott and inspired stewardship dot com. And who knows? Maybe I'd like to have you on the show to talk some about how your definition of of stewardship has impacted your life.
00:12:51 Thanks for listening