GIP Library icon

Thoughts On Stewardship Thoughts On Stewardship

Thoughts On Stewardship Order Printed Copy

  • Author: Rodney Howard-Browne
  • Size: 437KB | 49 pages
  • |
Continue with
Google Twitter
LOG IN TO REVIEW
About the Book


"Thoughts On Stewardship" by Rodney Howard-Browne discusses the importance of stewardship in the Christian faith, highlighting the responsibility of believers to manage and use resources wisely to further God's kingdom. Howard-Browne emphasizes the significance of generosity, faithfulness, and accountability in stewardship, offering practical insights and biblical principles for effective stewardship practices.

Carl F.H. Henry

Carl F.H. Henry “A Christianity without a passion to turn the world upside down is not reflective of Apostolic Christianity.” — Carl Henry Carl F. H. Henry was one of the founding architects of the modern, U.S. Evangelical movement. His fingerprints are everywhere around us, even if we lack the forensics to see them. Biography Perhaps the most significant theologian in the early “neo-evangelical” movement, Carl F. H. Henry was born to German immigrant parents just before the outbreak of World War I (1913). Raised on Long Island, Henry became interested in journalism, and by the age of nineteen, he edited a weekly newspaper in New York’s Suffolk county. After his conversion to Christianity, Henry attended Wheaton College, obtaining his bachelor’s and master’s degrees (1938 and 1940). Bent on pursuing an academic career in theology, he completed doctoral studies at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (1942) and later at Boston University (1949). He was ordained in the Northern Baptist Convention in 1941, and from 1940 until 1947, he taught theology and philosophy of religion at Northern Baptist Seminary. In 1947, he accepted the call of Harold J. Ockenga to become the first professor of theology at the new Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Henry took a prolonged sabbatical from his teaching duties in 1955 to become the first editor of Christianity Today, a publication conceived by Billy Graham and L. Nelson Bell and financed by Sun Oil magnate, J. Howard Pew, as an evangelical alternative to the Christian Century. Under Henry’s guidance, Christianity Today became the leading journalistic mouthpiece for neo-evangelicalism and lent the movement intellectual respectability. Faced with long hours away from his family, conflicts with Pew and Bell over editorial issues, and criticism from the fundamentalist wing of evangelicalism, Henry resigned the reins of Christianity Today in 1968. After a year of studies at Cambridge University, Henry became professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Seminary (1969-74) and visiting professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1971). After 1974, he served stints as lecturer-at-large for World Vision International (1974-87) and Prison Fellowship Ministries (1990-). Legacy From the beginning of his academic career Henry aspired to lead Protestant fundamentalism to a greater intellectual and social engagement with the larger American culture. As such, with Ockenga and Graham, he is one of the most significant leaders of evangelicalism of the post-World War II era. In fact, Henry’s book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947) is often seen as a kind of “neo-evangelical manifesto” marking the nascent movement’s break with separatist fundamentalists. Henry also demonstrated his leadership of the neo-evangelical movement through his presidency of the Evangelical Theological Society (1967-70) and the American Theological Society (1979-80), as well as his organizing role in the Berlin (1966) and Lausanne (1974) World Conferences on Evangelism. Henry’s many books, the most famous of which is the six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority (1976-83), consistently reiterate the themes of biblical theism, objective revelation in propositional form, the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures, and the rational apologetic defense of Christianity. Paradoxically, Henry has been attacked throughout his career by separatist fundamentalists for urging a more united evangelical witness, while being criticized by liberal evangelicals for his insistence on biblical inerrancy. Despite this carping, the historical significance of the person Time magazine once called in 1977, “the leading theologian” of American evangelicalism is incontestable. Biography & Legacy written by Robert H. Krapohl (University Librarian)

slain in the shadow of the almighty

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide  in the shadow of the Almighty . I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1–2) On January 8, 1956, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Flemming, and Roger Youderian were speared to death on a sandbar called “Palm Beach” in the Curaray River of Ecuador. They were trying to reach the Huaorani Indians for the first time in history with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Elisabeth Elliot memorialized the story in her book  Shadow of the Almighty . That title comes from Psalm 91:1: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in  the shadow of the Almighty .” Not an Accident This is where Jim Elliot was slain — in the shadow of the Almighty. Elisabeth had not forgotten the heartbreaking facts when she chose that title two years after her husband’s death. When he was killed, they had been married three years and had a ten-month-old daughter. “God’s refuge for his people is not from suffering and death, but final and ultimate defeat.” The title was not a slip — not any more than the death of the five missionaries was a slip. But the world saw it differently. Around the world, the death of these young men was called a tragic nightmare. Elisabeth believed the world was missing something. She wrote, “The world did not recognize the truth of the second clause in Jim Elliot’s credo: ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep  to gain what he cannot lose .’” She called her book  Shadow of the Almighty  because she was utterly convinced that the refuge of the people of God is not a refuge from suffering and death, but a refuge from final and ultimate defeat. “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24) — because the Lord is  God Almighty . God did not exercise his omnipotence to deliver Jesus from the cross. Nor will he exercise it to deliver you and me from tribulation. “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). If we have the faith and single-mindedness and courage of those five missionaries, we might find ourselves saying with the apostle Paul, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:36–39) Security in His Strength Has it ever hit home to you what it means to say, “My God, who loves me and gave himself for me, is  almighty ”? It means that if you take your place “in the shadow of the Almighty,” you will be protected by omnipotence. There is infinite and unending security in the almightiness of God — no matter what happens in this life. “There is infinite, unending security in the almightiness of God — no matter what happens in this life.” The omnipotence of God means eternal, unshakable refuge in the everlasting glory of God, no matter what happens on this earth. And that confidence is the power of radical obedience to the call of God — even the call to die. Is there anything more freeing, more thrilling, or more strengthening than the truth that  God Almighty  is your refuge — all day, every day, in all the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of life? Nothing but what he ordains for your good befalls you. God Intervened Research into the circumstances surrounding the martyrdom of the five missionaries has revealed the hand of God in unexpected ways. In the September 1996 issue of  Christianity Today , Steve Saint, son of Nate Saint, who was martyred along with Elliott, McCully, Flemming, and Youderian, wrote an article about new discoveries made about the tribal intrigue behind the slayings. He wrote one of the most amazing sentences on the sovereignty of the Almighty that I have ever read — especially coming from the son of a slain missionary: As [the killers] described their recollections, it occurred to me how incredibly unlikely it was that the Palm Beach killing took place at all; it is an anomaly that  I cannot explain outside of divine intervention . (italics added) In other words, there is only one explanation for why these five young men died and left a legacy that has inspired thousands. God intervened. This is the kind of sovereignty we mean when we say, “Nothing but what he ordains for your good befalls you.” “In the darkest moments of our pain, God is hiding his weapons behind enemy lines.” Which also means that no one, absolutely no one, can frustrate the designs of God to fulfill his missionary plans for the nations. In the darkest moments of our pain, God is hiding his weapons behind enemy lines. Everything that happens in history will serve this purpose as expressed in Psalm 86:9, All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. If we believed this, if we really let this truth of God’s omnipotence get hold of us — that we live perfectly secure  in the shadow of the Almighty  — what a difference it would make in our personal lives and in our families and churches. How humble and powerful we would become for the saving purposes of God.

Feedback
Suggestionsuggestion box
x