Resources on Effective Stewardship

The Acton Institute - The Acton Institute is an ecumenical think tank that studies the intersection between religion and economics.

The Stewardship Resource Bible - The Stewardship Resource Bible contains over 1600 passages that address leading a life of stewardship. The year-long Tour of Stewardship points to 366 passages that comprehensively reflect on fifteen major themes of stewardship. These are accompanied by insights from prominent authors, theologians and stewardship practitioners—present and past.

Stewardship of our Talents:

• The Call of the Entrepreneur - A recent film from Acton Media that traces the lives of three entrepreneurs. The documentary explores where their creative energies come from, what the essential qualities of an entrepreneur, and what governments can do to encourage the wealth-creating activities of the entrepreneur. The film is based on a short book by Acton president Rev. Robert Sirico.
• Business as a Calling (Free Press, 1996) by Michael Novak

Stewardship of the Environment:

• The Cornwall Alliance - The Cornwall Alliance is a coalition of clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics and policy experts committed to bringing a balanced biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development.
• We Get It!
• Free Markets Best Protect the Environment - An interview with the Honorable Donald P. Hodel, former Under-Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Energy, and during President Reagan's second term, Secretary of the Interior.
• Stewardship Without Prices and Private Property? Modern Evangelical Environmentalism's Struggle to Value Nature - The "stewardship" paradigm faces the same problems of economic calculation that have doomed socialism.
• "Unstoppable Solar Cycles"
• Acton Commentary - search for "Environmental Stewardship"
• Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (Eerdmans, 1997) by Calvin Beisner.
• Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Acton Institute Press, 2007) ed. by Jay W. Richards.

Stewardship of our Fellow Man:

• Impact Poverty - For people of faith, compassion for the poor is a non-negotiable. Compassion alone, however, doesn't help the poor.
• The Samaritan Guide - The Samaritan Guide provides detailed information on hundreds of private and grass-roots nonprofits around the country.
• Solution to Poverty - How effective is the government in helping the needy? The government spends billions on these problems, but it cannot know the individuals it seeks to help—can't know their names, their specific struggles—it cannot love them in the true sense. How can government hope to solve a person's deepest problems?
• The Tragedy of American Compassion (Regnery, 1992) by Marvin Olasky.
• Renewing American Compassion: How Compassion for the Needy Can Turn Ordinary Citizens into Heroes (Free Press, 1996) by Marvin Olasky.
• Wealth & Poverty (Basic Books, 1981) by George Gilder.

Stewardship of our Institutions:

• Freedom, the Family and the Market - The socialist ideal of equality has played an independent role in the breakdown of the family.
• Marriage in the City - Marriage and family are taking a beating these days. Yet getting married and having kids continues to be an important goal for most people. What makes this goal so elusive? Quite apart from all the ideological and cultural forces that work against life-long married love, economic factors conspire to make household formation more expensive than it needs to be. And that in turn, makes it unnecessarily difficult for the young to live up to Christian standards of saving sex for marriage.
• Men and Marriage (Pelican, 1986) by George Gilder.
• Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love In A Hook-up World (Spence, 2005) by Jennifer Roback Morse.
• The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, And Morals (Spence, 2006) ed. by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain.
• The Birth of Freedom (DVD, 2008) by Acton Media.

Stewardship of our Finances:

• Wealth, Work, and the Church - This lecture explores the biblical foundations of work and wealth creation in light of the history of the Church to find the proper balance between competing ideas of the place of earthly riches in Christianity.
• Generous Living: Finding Contentment through Giving (Zondervan, 1997) by Ron Blue with Jodie Berndt.
• The New Master Your Money (Moody, 2004) by Ron Blue with Jeremy White.