What Is Christian Stewardship?

What the Bible means by stewardship, from the garden of Eden to the parable of the talents, and how Christians live it today

At the foot of the Mount of Olives, in the small walled garden beside the Church of All Nations, stand eight very old olive trees. Their trunks are so twisted and hollowed by age that only three could be reliably dated when Italian researchers studied them in 2012. The dated wood in those three trees originated in the twelfth century. The genetic tests held a second surprise: all eight trees shared the same genetic profile, suggesting that they were propagated from a single parent plant. At some point, someone had taken cuttings from an olive tree and planted them, and generations of gardeners after them had kept the line alive. Today the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land tend the grove, and pilgrims still stand at its railings to pray where Jesus prayed on the night before he died.

Nobody in that long chain owned those trees for long. Each received them, cared for them and handed them on. That is the idea at the heart of Christian stewardship: the belief that everything we have, our life, our time, our abilities, our bodies, our money, the people we love and the earth itself, belongs to God and has been placed in our hands for a while, to be cared for, used well and one day accounted for.

What Is Stewardship in the Bible?

A steward is a manager of someone else's property. In the households of the ancient world, a wealthy owner would often put one trusted servant in charge of everything: the land, the stores, the money and the other servants. When Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt, his master Potiphar came to trust him so completely that he put him in charge of his whole house and gave no thought to anything except the food he ate (Genesis 39:4–6). The New Testament word for such a person is oikonomos, literally "house-manager." The related Greek word oikonomia, meaning household management, is where English gets the word economy.

The steward's position was one of great trust and great responsibility. He had real authority, but it was never his own. Jesus asked who, then, is the faithful and wise manager whom the master puts in charge of his household, to give the other servants their food at the proper time, and said that servant would be blessed if the master found him doing his work when he returned (Luke 12:42–43). Paul wrote that what is required of stewards above everything else is that they be found trustworthy (1 Corinthians 4:2).

The Bible applies this picture to the whole of human life. The earth and everything in it belong to the Lord, says the psalmist, the world and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1). When King David gathered gold, silver and timber for the Temple his son would build, he prayed that everything in heaven and earth was God's already, and that the people were only giving back what had come from God's own hand (1 Chronicles 29:11–14). Peter told the first Christians to use whatever gift each had received to serve one another, as good stewards of the many-sided grace of God (1 Peter 4:10).

Stewardship, then, is not one subject among others, like fundraising or recycling. It is a way of seeing everything. The table below shows the main areas Scripture names.

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Dominion or Care? Stewardship in Genesis

The Bible's teaching on stewardship begins on its first page. After creating human beings in his own image, male and female, God blesses them and tells them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to rule over the fish, the birds and every living creature (Genesis 1:26–28). The two Hebrew verbs are strong ones. Radah, rule, is used elsewhere of kings, and kabash, subdue, of bringing land under control.

For much of the twentieth century, these verses were blamed for the damage done to the natural world. In a famous 1967 article in the journal Science, the American historian Lynn White argued that Western Christianity, by teaching that nature exists to serve humanity, bore a large share of the guilt for the ecological crisis. His article was widely read and much debated. Interestingly, White did not conclude that Christians should abandon their faith. He proposed St Francis of Assisi as a patron saint for those who care about nature.

Many biblical scholars and church teachers today answer that White's reading leaves out the rest of the story. Three points are usually made:

• Rule is meant to look like God's rule. In the ancient Near East, kings set up statues of themselves in distant provinces to show who ruled there. Genesis calls every human being God's image, his living representative on earth. Humans are to rule as God rules, and the Psalms describe God's rule as care: he gives the animals their food in due season and satisfies every living thing (Psalm 145:15–16; Psalm 104).
• Genesis 2 adds to Genesis 1. In the second account of creation, God places the first human in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew words are abad, to work or serve, and shamar, to keep, guard or watch over, the same word used for guarding a flock or keeping God's commandments.
• The land remains God's. In the law of Moses, God reminds Israel that the land must not be sold permanently, because the land is his, and they are only foreigners and tenants living on it with him (Leviticus 25:23).

Pope Francis made the same argument in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si'. He admitted that Christians have at times misread the Scriptures, but said that being made in God's image does not justify absolute domination over other creatures, and that the command to till and keep the garden means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. "We are not God," he wrote. "The earth was here before us and it has been given to us" (Laudato Si', 67).

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The Parable of the Talents

Jesus' best-known teaching on stewardship is a story about money, but its meaning reaches much further. A man who was about to travel abroad called his servants and entrusted his property to them: to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his ability. Then he left. The first two servants went off at once and traded with the money, and each doubled it. The third dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money (Matthew 25:14–18).

A talent was not a coin but a weight of silver, worth about six thousand denarii. Since a labourer earned about a denarius a day (Matthew 20:2), even a single talent represented roughly twenty years of daily wages. The servant with one talent had not been given a little. He had been given a fortune.

After a long time, the master returned to settle accounts. To each of the first two servants he said the same words: well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will put you in charge of much; enter into the joy of your master. The servant who had received two talents received exactly the same praise as the one who had received five. Then the third servant came. He said he knew his master was a hard man, so he had been afraid and had hidden the money in the ground, and here it was back. The master called him wicked and lazy, took the talent from him and gave it to the servant who had ten (Matthew 25:19–30).

Christians have drawn several lessons from the parable:

• Everything is entrusted. The money was never the servants' own. The master gave it, and the master would come back for it.
• Gifts differ, and that is not unfair. Each servant received according to his ability. The question is not how much we were given, but what we did with it.
• Faithfulness is what is praised. The servant with two talents was praised in the same words as the one with five. God does not compare his servants with one another.
• Fear is the real failure. The third servant did not steal or waste. He buried the gift because he was afraid of his master and of losing it. The parable treats playing it safe with God's gifts as a kind of unfaithfulness.

The parable left a mark on the English language. The word talent came to mean a natural gift or ability in the late Middle Ages, probably mostly because of this story. Luke tells a similar parable, in which each servant receives the same sum and the results differ (Luke 19:11–27). In the same Gospel, Jesus adds two principles that sum up the teaching: whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much (Luke 16:10), and from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).

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Stewardship of Time

Time is the one gift everyone receives in the same daily measure and no one can store. Psalm 90, which the Bible calls a prayer of Moses, asks God to teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). Paul urged the Ephesians to live carefully, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of the time (Ephesians 5:15–16). The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for everything under heaven: a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to keep silent and a time to speak (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8).

Biblical stewardship of time is not the same as productivity. Its foundation is the Sabbath. The fourth commandment tells Israel to work for six days and rest on the seventh, because God rested from the work of creation (Exodus 20:8–11). Deuteronomy gives a second reason: you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought you out (Deuteronomy 5:12–15). Rest is a mark of freedom. Servants, foreigners and even working animals were to rest too. Jesus taught that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). Christians came to gather for worship on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, and many traditions also regard it as a day of rest. They retained the principle that part of our time belongs to God and is given back to him, although Christians differ in how they understand the continuing observance of the Sabbath.

Christian tradition has long taught that the way to use time well is to give it a rhythm. The Rule of St Benedict, written in the sixth century and still followed by Benedictine monks and nuns, divides the day between prayer, work and reading, and warns that idleness is the enemy of the soul. Most Christians do not live in monasteries, but the same principle applies: a few fixed times of prayer each day can shape everything else. Simple ways to build that rhythm are described in our guide to a daily prayer routine.

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Stewardship of Gifts and the Body

Every Christian has been given something to offer. Paul compared the Church to a body with many parts: just as each part has a different function, believers have different gifts according to the grace given to them. Some prophesy, some serve, some teach, some encourage, some give, some lead, and some show mercy, and each should do it fully and gladly (Romans 12:4–8). To each person, he told the Corinthians, a manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7).

Those gifts are rarely dramatic. Most are ordinary abilities offered with love: cooking for a family in grief, teaching children the faith, keeping a parish's accounts, visiting the sick, singing in a choir, listening well. The point of the parable of the talents applies here directly. A gift that is never used, out of fear, false modesty or busyness, is a gift buried in the ground.

Scripture also counts the body among the things entrusted to us. Paul reminded the Corinthians that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that they are not their own, and that they were bought at a price, so they should glorify God in their bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). He urged the Romans to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God (Romans 12:1). Caring for the body, with rest, food, exercise and medical care, is part of Christian faithfulness.

This needs one word of care. Stewardship of the body is not the same as being fit, healthy or able-bodied. Many of the most faithful Christians live with chronic illness, disability or age, and their bodies are no less temples of the Spirit. Faithfulness here means honouring the body we have, not judging ourselves against someone else's.

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Stewardship of Money

Money is the area where most people first meet the word stewardship, often in a parish appeal. In their 1992 pastoral letter Stewardship: A Disciple's Response, the Catholic bishops of the United States described a Christian steward as someone who receives God's gifts gratefully, cherishes and tends them responsibly, shares them with others in justice and love, and returns them with increase to the Lord. Their letter helped popularise an understanding of stewardship often summarised in three words that many Catholic and Protestant churches now use: time, talent and treasure.

Jesus made the link between money and every other kind of stewardship directly. If you have not been faithful with dishonest wealth, he asked, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own (Luke 16:11–12)? What the Bible teaches about wealth, greed, generosity, tithing and debt is set out in full in our guide to what the Bible says about money and wealth. If you would like to bring your own finances to God in prayer, our prayers for work and financial help include a prayer for responsible stewardship.

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Caring for Creation

The Bible is full of delight in the natural world. Psalm 104 praises God for the springs that give drink to the wild donkeys, the trees where the birds nest, the high mountains for the wild goats, and the sea teeming with creatures beyond number. When God finally answers Job, he speaks almost entirely about animals and weather, the mountain goats giving birth, the wild ox, the ostrich, the horse and the hawk, creatures that exist for God's purposes and not for human use (Job 38–39). In Genesis, God sees everything he has made and calls it very good (Genesis 1:31) before human beings have done anything with it at all.

The law of Moses wrote care for the land and its creatures into daily life. Every seventh year the land itself was to have a Sabbath rest, with no sowing or pruning (Leviticus 25:2–7). Even in war, an army besieging a town was forbidden to cut down its fruit trees, because the trees were not the enemy (Deuteronomy 20:19–20). Someone who found a bird's nest was not to take the mother with the young (Deuteronomy 22:6–7), and Proverbs says that the righteous care for the needs of their animals (Proverbs 12:10). In the New Testament, Paul writes that the whole creation is groaning as if in childbirth, waiting to be set free from decay (Romans 8:19–22), and that through Christ God is reconciling all things to himself, on earth and in heaven (Colossians 1:19–20).

In recent decades, Christians of every major tradition have spoken about the care of creation with growing urgency:

• Orthodox: In 1989, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios proclaimed 1 September, the first day of the Orthodox Church year, as a day of prayer for creation. His successor, Patriarch Bartholomew, has spoken about the environment so often that he is widely known as the Green Patriarch. In 1997 he declared that "to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin." Orthodox theologians often describe human beings as priests of creation, who receive the world from God with thanksgiving and offer it back to him.
• Catholic: In 1979, Pope John Paul II named St Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecology. In 2015, Pope Francis published Laudato Si', named after the opening words of Francis's Canticle of the Creatures, and established a World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on 1 September, the same day as the Orthodox.
• Protestant: Many evangelical, Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed churches teach creation care as part of discipleship. The Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment of 2010 calls Christians to adopt lifestyles that renounce habits of consumption that are destructive or polluting. Other evangelicals, such as the signatories of the 1999 Cornwall Declaration, affirm stewardship but put more weight on human flourishing and are sceptical of parts of the environmental movement. The disagreement is mostly about policy and priorities, not about whether the earth belongs to God.

Since 2007, churches belonging to the World Council of Churches and many others have kept a Season of Creation from 1 September to 4 October, the feast of St Francis. In the Holy Land, the question is close to home. Olive trees have fed families there for generations, and the work of caring for them is described in our article on protecting the olive trees of the Holy Land.

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Stewards of the Faith

The most precious thing entrusted to Christians is not land or money but the faith itself. Paul described himself and the other apostles as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1). He told Timothy to guard the good treasure entrusted to him, with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us (2 Timothy 1:14). The faith is received, not invented, and it is meant to be passed on.

For most Christians, that passing on happens first at home. Moses told the people of Israel to keep God's words in their hearts and to teach them to their children, talking about them at home and on the road, when they lie down and when they get up (Deuteronomy 6:6–7). Parents, godparents, grandparents and teachers are stewards of the faith in the most practical way. Families and friendships are entrusted to us too, and Scripture treats neglecting one's own household as a serious failure (1 Timothy 5:8).

Christians have always seen one man as the model of this kind of quiet faithfulness. St Francis of Assisi owned almost nothing, yet he treated everything, from lepers to larks to Brother Sun and Sister Water, as a gift from the same Father. In 2026, the Church marks eight hundred years since his death, and his story is told in our article on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

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Living as a Steward Today

Stewardship is less a programme than a habit of mind. Here are some simple ways Christians put it into practice:

1. Begin with gratitude. Before deciding what to do with what you have, thank God for it. A steward who forgets that everything is a gift soon starts acting like an owner.
2. Give your time a shape. Keep regular times of prayer and a real day of rest each week, and notice where the rest of your time actually goes.
3. Use one gift for someone else this month. Offer a skill to your parish, a neighbour or a charity, even if it seems small.
4. Plan your giving. Decide in advance what you will give, rather than giving only what is left over.
5. Care for your body without worshipping it. Rest, eat well, see a doctor when you need one, and accept the limits of age and illness without shame.
6. Waste less. Buy what you need, repair what you can, and treat food, water and energy as gifts rather than rights.
7. Hand on the faith. Pray with your children or grandchildren, tell them the stories of Scripture, and let them see what you believe.

Stewardship touches every part of Christian life, and it is one thread among many. For the wider picture of what it means to follow Christ day by day, see our guide to how to live as a Christian.

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