I’m nearing the end of Culture Making (book, website), by Andy Crouch and ideas keep continue to build and inspire.  I love how a lot of ideas presented are redemptive and life giving.  For example, Crouch talks about the three human desires, namely sex, money and power.  He notes that the first two are redeemed by chastity and fidelity, and simplicity and generosity and then goes on in detail about the two redeeming aspects of power: service and stewardship.

On service, he noted that “service often implies condescension [...] in the sense of maintaining our sense of superiority even while we offer charity to those ‘less fortunate.”  But Crouch challenges his readers with a different perspective where those we serve, are “in fact the people with their own untapped cultural capacities–people whom we might end up needing as much as they need us.”  He continues to encourage us that if we “put our power at their service, we unlock their creative capacity without in any way diminishing our own.”  I think that serving someone as if you are the one in need, is dignifying and empowering of those you serve!

On stewardship, Crouch notes that it is different from charity, which is “simply the transfer of assets from rich to poor,” and instead much more like an investment, where the investor “expects  their own resources to grow alongside the success of the enterprises they invest in.”  He concludes it with the statement that “stewards are simply those who invest with resources they know are not their own, in places where they will only be a return on investment if God is indeed at loose and at work in the world.”  I think that the idea of stewardship, especially the idea of investing with the resources we have been given (and are not actually our own, but God’s) is empowering!

(selected quotes taken from pages 229-233)