You could call this post the third in a “Safety/Surrender” series.  In post #248 (Crossing the Fourth Gap), we introduced the Safety/Surrender Gap.  It is crossed when a faithful leader has fully surrendered their organizational leadership to God, accepting their role as a steward rather than an owner.   Our most recent post #249 (Warning for Leaders: “DDD”) was about a faithful leader “finishing well” by pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing and not giving up or settling for less than God’s best.

This post is about encouraging faithful leaders to trust God enough to answer the call of the Creation Mandate by crossing the Safety/Surrender Gap.

Embracing Potential

The potential we hope faithful leaders will have the courage to embrace is the leadership potential embedded in the call of the Creation Mandate.  As a refresher, the Creation Mandate (what some also refer to as the Cultural Mandate) is found in Genesis 1:28:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

We are not just another species of animal created to co-exist alongside all others. We are different, and we were given a commandment about our purpose on earth. The Creation Mandate tells us the WHO, WHAT, WHERE and HOW of that purpose:

• WHO: We are to “have dominion”. Although that term sounds ominous and, on its face, seems to hold the potential to justify abusing the earth and its creation, the term means “stewardship”. We are to care for God’s creation as its STEWARDS.

• WHAT: In our role as Stewards, we are to CREATE LIFE–“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”. Again, theologians tell us that this includes creating life sustaining and life affirming PRODUCTS and CULTURE. God placed us here to subdue and bring order to the world. We are to cultivate nature to enable it to flourish.

• WHERE: In our role as Stewards, we have GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY–it is the “the earth”.

• HOW: We were created in the image of God, which means we are to Steward with authority and leadership in that image–the image of a God who declared all of His creation “very good”. In God’s image, we have creativity and productivity that is to be used to CULTIVATE God’s creation in order to enable flourishing. Our cultivation of nature glorifies God, because it uses His raw materials (including us) and His design and mandate.

Theologian Tim Keller explains it this way:

The word “subdue” indicates that, though all God had made was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor. . . . We are called to stand in for God here in the world, exercising stewardship over the rest of creation in his place as his vice-regents. We share in doing the things that God has done in creation—bringing order out of chaos, creatively building a civilization out of the material of physical and human nature, caring for all that God has made. This is a major part of what we were created to be.

Richard Rohr captured the potential of the Creation Mandate call:

A more appropriate view of creation would be not perfection but potential. God designed the world to develop and function in a certain way, while allowing for creation to live freely into its potential. Sometimes creation will live up to and into its potential, while other times it will renounce it. . . . Potential reminds us once again that goodness is both an origin and a goal. It is given to us as a gift, but it is also given to us as a calling.

In describing the challenge of crossing Safety/Surrender Gap, we made a distinction between “religious stewardship” and “faithful stewardship”.  Most importantly, “religious stewardship” is still operating in the will of the faithful leader and stops short of true heart transformation–changing the organization’s WHY from profit to Humanizing People, Beautifying the World and Glorifying God.

By contrast, the stewardship of surrender–“faithful stewardship” –means leading the organization in line with God’s will, which includes aligning its purpose, values and culture with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities and transforming its WHY–its heart–from what the world values to what God values.

Religious stewardship is not “bad”.  Engaging in the unquestionably good faith activities along the faith as usual Side Roads is “good”.  Oswald Chambers observed:

The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. It is the good that opposes the best.

Faithful stewardship of an organization is the Creation Mandate call to faithful leaders given stewardship of an organization.  Faithful stewardship is the stewardship required in order for a faithful leader to embrace fully the potential of the Creation Mandate in their life–the potential of their leadership.  Anything less is to renounce that potential.

We believe embracing the full potential of the Creation Mandate requires a leader to cross the Safety/Surrender Gap, because only on the Surrender side of the chasm is faithful stewardship possible.

Only One

It is challenging for a faithful leader to embrace fully the stewardship potential of the Creation Mandate because faithful stewardship is difficult and rare.  Faithful stewardship requires a level of obedience by a faithful leader that is rare in our broken world.  Dr. Skip Moen laments:

[God] intended human beings to be His vice-regents, His hands and feet in creation, and to alter the course of the universe in the process.  Such a lofty goal failed to inspire obedience, and Man’s infernal obsession with self propelled him away from God’s divine-human syncopation.  Nothing grieves God more.

You may recall from post #248 the Barna research suggesting that only 2% of people in the United States who call themselves Christians reach the “surrender” stage of spiritual wholeness, which we believe is a prerequisite to faithful stewardship of an organization.

Barna’s explains that the obedience to God’s will necessary for “surrender” requires radical dependence:

[God] wants you to define success according to your obedience to His will and pursuit of His vision for your life, rather than simply meeting the standards of the world — even the church world. . . . [T]rue spiritual transformation is impossible unless you become fully dependent upon God. Fully dependent.

In a broken world, the “faith” required for “faithful stewardship” of an organization–submitting completely to God’s will in its leadership–requires radical trust put into action.  Having the right beliefs can live alongside and fuel “religious stewardship”, but it is not enough to embrace fully the potential of the Creation Mandate.  Again turning to the insights of Dr. Moen:

Faith is my active attitude of total reliance on God’s absolute trustworthiness.  That means that my “faith” is demonstrated in the action of putting myself in His care, no matter what the circumstances!  Until and unless I act on His reliability, I just don’t have faith.  I might have a set of written beliefs that I can recite, but I won’t have any active relationship.  Faith is only found in the action, not the declaration.  Israel claimed to have “faith” in God, but their actions revealed denial of His claim on them.  The truth is that they were faithless. How much faith does it take to please God?  The question itself is wrong-headed.  If faith is the action of trusting Him, then I either act or I don’t act.  I either trust Him, or I try my own way.  There is no half-full measure here.

Commenting on radical trust, Oswald Chambers said, “We act like pagans in a crisis—only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.”

Being the One

“Being the one” requires faithful stewardship, which requires radical surrender, which requires radical dependence, which requires radical trust, which is the manifestation of radical faith.

We have written a lot about trust in our posts.  In the RE-ALIGN step of pursuing faithful integrity, trust is one of the five key ingredients for executing a Re-Imagined Vision, Re-Imagined Values and a Re-Imagined Culture.

The Bible is pretty clear about the importance of trust in God:

Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. (Isaiah 26:4)

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. (Jeremiah 17:7)

He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. (2 Kings 18:5)

Trust in God is trust in His sovereignty, trust in His commands, and trust in his promises.  When God calls, He promises to equip the one called as they answer that call.  What God promises, He can deliver. Consider these examples:

When God commanded Moses to build a sanctuary, He equipped the Israelites with all the skills they needed to carry out the command:

The Lord said to Moses,“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah,and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship,to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze,in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you. (Exodus 31:1-6)

When God called Jeremiah as a prophet and commanded him to speak whatever God told him to speak, Jeremiah felt unequipped.  God reassured him:

“Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.” Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” (Jeremiah 1: 8-9)

When God called Gideon to strike down the Midianites, God sent an angel to reassure Gideon “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” (Judges 6:12)

When God called Saul to be king, Samuel told him:

Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you. (1 Samuel 10:6-7)

When David was called to be king, we are told “The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.” (1 Samuel 16:13).  When David faced Goliath, he trusted that God would equip him:

The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. (1 Samuel 17:37)

The Creation Mandate in Genesis 1:28 is a call to every faithful leader.  It is a call filled with potential to be realized or renounced.  We believe it is a call to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing and a call to cross the Safety/Surrender Gap.  It is a call to the “best” God has for a faithful leader, but a call few faithful leaders pursue with the radical dependance, trust and faith needed to embrace fully that potential.  Be the one.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  John 15:13 tells us “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”  I think that includes being willing to lay down one’s life, even if it is not necessary.  This week holds Veteran’s Day–a day of gratitude for those willing to lay down their lives for others.  It is a day to honor the many brave veterans who willingly crossed another kind of “safety/surrender” gap for their country, for its ideals, and for their fellow Americans.  Thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

ESSENCE:  You could call this post the third in a “Safety/Surrender” series.  It is about encouraging faithful leaders to trust God enough to answer the call of stewardship, and embrace fully the potential, of the Creation Mandate by crossing the Safety/Surrender Gap. We believe it is a call to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing, surrendering pursuit of the leader’s will for pursuit of God’s will.  For a faithful leader of an organization, the stewardship of surrender–“faithful stewardship”–is the stewardship required in order for a faithful leader to embrace fully that potential. Anything less–even unquestionably “good” faith as usual activities–is to renounce it.  Faithful stewardship is a call to the “best” God has for a faithful leader, but it requires a level of obedience, dependence, trust and faith that is rare in our broken world, even among the faithful. When God calls, He promises to equip the one called.  What God promises, He can deliver. 

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