Stewardship and Spirituality: A Way of Living the Gospel

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, March 2005

Sometimes we hear it said that stewardship is a form of spirituality. What do we mean by “spirituality”? And what does it have to do with stewardship?

Spirituality is a way of living the Gospel. It’s the way that individual Christians cooperate with the Holy Spirit to take their own unique gifts, talents and personalities and use them to respond wholeheartedly to the Lord’s invitation to follow Him. Examples of Christian spirituality can be found in the lives of the saints. Each individual saint expresses his or her Christian witness in slightly different ways, but all seek to live the Gospel and to be faithful to the Lord in all aspects of daily life.

When we say that stewardship is a form of spirituality, we mean that it is a way of life that helps us to follow Jesus in our daily lives. Stewardship answers the question posed by the rich young man in the Gospel: “What must I do to be per­fect?” (What must I do to more fully and completely live the Christian way of life?) The Lord tells the young man (and each of us) to obey the commandments: to honor God, to respect our parents, to defend life, to be grateful and content with all our gifts, and to be honest and truthful in all things. But even more, Jesus invites us to give up our dependence on material and spiritual possessions and to follow him without counting the cost. …”

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