Entries Tagged 'Stewardship' ↓

I think I am going wrap up this discussion of the kind of culture we want to shape in our home with this post. I’m sure there are parts I’ve missed but I think what I’ve written so far is more than enough to get us started!

“Everything we have is a gift from God. Everything.” (Sweet)

Shaping a Trustee Culture. In a trustee culture, people see themselves as having been entrusted with gifts and resources from God to be used in ways that honor God and further God’s work in the world. IOW, our stuff is not really our stuff, it is a gift from God to be used wisely.

Good stewardship has always been important to us. We’ve written about Teaching Good Money Management and Our Best Money Practices.

Leonard Sweet talks about trusteeship in his book, SoulSalsa …

God owns everything: the cattle, the car, the IRA, the TIAA-CREF. You and I own nothing. Not even ourselves. … We prove our nonownership when we die. You can’t take it with you because it isn’t yours to begin with.

Shaping a trustee culture will require us to be good trustees (or stewards) ourselves. Then we will need to teach Ethan to view himself as a trustee — someone blessed by God to use his God-given resources in ways that honor God.

Well, as I said, this will wrap up a look at the kind of culture we want to shape in our home. Previously, I wrote about shaping a God-centered culture, a learning culture, a high AQ culture, a leadership culture, and a servant culture.

This series has given us an opportunity to be intentional about the kind of culture we want to shape, but now it’s time to put it into to practice with Ethan!

Randy’s message on Sunday included a brief rundown of our best money practices. We believe it’s extremely important to have good money practices, but the purpose of good money practices is more than building a savings account or preparing for the future. The real purpose of good money practices is to honor God. John Wesley said, “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” It’s about honoring God with our finances.

So, FWIW, here’s what we think our best money practices are. We hope they will be helpful to you.

1. Tithing/Giving. Our best money practice, hands down, is our commitment to give a percentage of our increase (everything we receive) to God. We believe the tithe (10%) is a good benchmark for us to start with. As we grow, we plan to continually (gradually) increase our giving. We currently designate a little more 10% for “tithes,” which we distribute to the churches we serve. We also designate an additional percentage for “offerings” to support special offerings and other ministries (see some of the “great causes” in the sidebar for some examples). We try to increase our giving every couple of years or so.

2. Tracking expenses. Next to tithing/giving, tracking our expenses has been one of our best money practices. It helps us know where our money goes and where we may need to make adjustments in the future. We track our expenses (and income) using an Excel document (which works well), but we are in the process of searching for alternatives (simply to see if there’s a better way). One service we’ll probably look into is Yodlee. “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” (John Wesley)

3. Budget. Our budget, which we see our budget as more of a guideline than as something rigid, grew out of tracking our expenses. We have a good idea where our money will go because we know where it has gone in the past. At the beginning of the year, we can adjust the budget as necessary. One of the best things we’ve done is to budget amounts for individual things (e.g. clothes). In those areas, we don’t need to ask each other for permission to buy something as long as we have the money in our budget. It minimizes any conflict we might have over spending decisions, not to mention, sparing us the wasted time and energy. It also helps that neither of us are impulse spenders, and we’re both fairly frugal.

4. Use of credit cards. We’ve been using credit cards for (most) everything possible since we’ve been married. Because we use cash back credit cards, we have probably earned a few thousand dollars in cash back over the years. We pay as we go and have the full payments drafted from our bank account every month so we don’t have to worry about extra charges.

5. Planning for the future. In the last several years, we have been receiving a pension benefit through our service as pastors in the UMC. We also contribute part of our salaries to our pension plans as well. In the last couple of years we have tried to be more intentional about preparing for the future. As we expand our family in 2008, we will also begin thinking about saving for our child’s college expenses. The main thing is to plan ahead as much as possible.

These are our best money practices. Having good money practices is important. We’re sure there are some things we could do better. What are some of your best money practices? What areas do you need to work on? Let us know by leaving a comments below. Also, feel free to discuss any of the above.

Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers everywhere are talking about one issue. The issue this year is the environment. When I think about the environment, I think about the importance of caring for God’s creation.

Many stories exist of St. Francis of Assisi, often called the patron saint of animals and the environment, and his special relationship with animals. One of the most famous tells how he tamed a wolf that terrorized a village so that the wolf and the people lived in peace with one another from that time on. This story reflects the belief of St. Francis that it is the duty of humankind to protect and care for all nature as stewards of God’s creation.

Many churches offer a blessing of the animals in early October. Manor Hill United Methodist Charge did so for the first time on Sunday (10.14.2007). People were invited to bring their small pets (and photos of larger pets and herds) to be blessed. We enjoyed a beautiful sunny day on the hillside by Faith UMC.

Thanks to Jeff Glenny for coordinating and leading this service! Each person and pet were given a copy of the following prayer:

Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. On the fifth and sixth days of creation, you called forth fish in the sea, birds in the air and animals on the land. You inspired St. Francis to call all animals his brothers and sisters. We ask you to bless this animal. By the power of your love, enable it to live according to your plan. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures! Amen.

Don’t just live a life, leave a legacy!

Awhile back, we watched The Ultimate Gift (official movie/movement website). We watched it again while visiting family in Tennessee earlier this week. It’s a great movie with the tag line, “A life experience becomes a gift.” The movie is based on Jim Stovall’s book, The Ultimate Gift.

The movie begins with the death of Red Stevens (James Garner), a wealthy businessman. One of his family members, Jason Stevens, expects (as does the rest of the family) a big inheritance. Instead, his grandfather recorded several video vignettes during his final days, which become a crash course on life for Jason. Red states …

So I want to give you a gift—a series of gifts leading up to, well, I wanna call it “the ultimate gift.” Now, you fail in any way, it’s over. You get nothing.

During one of his recorded speeches, Red says …

Our lives should be lived not avoiding problems but welcoming them as challenges that will strengthen us so that we can be victorious in the future.

That’s a great statement!

If you watch The Ultimate Gift on DVD, be sure to watch the beginning of the credits at the end of the movie for a recap of the “gifts,” which include:

The gifts of …

• Work
• Money
• Friends
• Learning
• Problems (You don’t begin to live until you lose everything, Red.)
• Family
• Laughter
• Dreams
• Giving
• Gratitude
• A day
• Love

The music in this movie, composed by Mark McKenzie is good. Our favorite is “Something Changed” by Sara Groves. The song is about life transformation. The chorus says …

And I cannot make it. And I cannot fake it. And I can’t afford it. But it’s mine.

The song, which appears on Sara’s 2005 Add to the Beauty CD (you can listen to 30-second clips of all of Sara’s songs at her site; just find the album and click on the song title) [EDIT: Sara's site has changed and this link no longer works, unfortunately], proclaims that life change is God’s work — you can’t make it, fake it, or earn it, it’s a gift from God to all who will receive it.

Since the movie we’ve become very interested in Sara’s music! We especially love her latest single (from her upcoming CD, “Tell Me What You Know” called “When the Saints,” an inspirational song for people who want to change the world).

One of the movie’s sponsors, Once Upon a Family, has put together a kit to help families put the message of the movie into practice. As we prepare for parenthood, we’re thinking about things like legacy and developing strong character in children. This movie certainly comes at the right time for us!

The movie reminded us of Leonard Sweet’s book, SoulSalsa, especially the chapter called, “Bounce Your Last Check.” You can read extensive portions of the book at Google Books (scroll down to page 52 to read a portion of this chapter). In the book, which you’ll find in our list of recommend books for leaders, Sweet says, “Soul artists receive good things gratefully and give it all away in the end.”

We strongly recommend “The Ultimate Gift.” Even more importantly, this is a movie that needs to be more than simply watched and enjoyed, it needs to be internalized and put into practice.

May God help us all to leave a legacy!

Resources to help teach children and youth good money management to last a lifetime!

We recently came across a list of online resources for young investors while reading an article about teaching kids good money habits. This website contains many links that offer helpful advice/resources for teaching kids good money management.

We’re in the process of adopting a child and we plan to teach good money management early on. The article we read reported that one university has shown that children as young as 5 can learn good money habits. One of the links at the site above said as one begins to teach math, one can also begin to teach about the use of money.

Teaching kids good money management is important. We read a couple years ago that credit card debt is the number one reason students drop out of college and the average credit card debt among college students is about $2800.

Of course, our purpose isn’t simply to teach our child to manage money well so that he or she can save a lot of money, but as Christ-followers, to teach our child to be a good steward of God’s gifts and resources.

If you have advice and/or resources to share, please click on “comments” to post them.