KS 431 - Stewardship Over Ownership

The pressure you feel might not be coming from your workload. It might be coming from a single belief: “It all belongs to me, so it all depends on me.” That idea sounds responsible, even admirable, but it can quietly crush Christian entrepreneurs, executives, and fathers who are trying to lead well while carrying the full emotional weight of outcomes they can’t control. 

I’m sharing a story that stopped me in my tracks, one I heard connected to David Green from Hobby Lobby. As he wrestled with succession planning while the business reached the billion-dollar level, a moment in prayer reframed everything: if he weren’t the owner, he’d focus on being a faithful CEO and let the owner handle ownership decisions. Then came the realization that changes how you lead a business, build a legacy, and sleep at night: God is the Owner. We’re the stewards. 

From there, we walk through the biblical framework behind stewardship, including Jesus’ parables about servants entrusted with resources and the parable of the talents. We talk about why God provides opportunities, people, and resources, and why we’re still accountable to multiply what we’ve been given. We also bring it home to leadership in the family, where stewardship creates both clarity and freedom without lowering the standard for excellence. 

If this connects with you, share it with a friend who’s carrying too much, subscribe for more marketplace Christianity, and leave a review so more leaders can find the show. What area of your life needs a stewardship mindset today?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Proverbs chapter 22, verse 29 says, Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men. Fellow marketplace Christians, stop apologizing and start winning. Welcome to the Success Edge, the show that helps you take your walk as a marketplace Christian to the next level. Here's your host, Christian entrepreneur Tyler McCart.

A Networking Event Sparks The Theme

David Green And The Succession Burden

God As Owner And Us As Stewards

Talents Parable And The Risk Of Waste

Leadership And Family Under Stewardship

Legacy Offer And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 0:30

What's going on, Kingdom Success? Podcast listeners and viewers, thank you so much for tuning into the channel or the podcast, whichever one you're listening to or watching. This is episode 431. And I'm excited to do this after extra episode, all right? I'm doing a little bit different uh setup. Normally I'm sitting over there, uh, but today I'm actually sitting on my desk. I have my actually my microphone hooked up right here. I've got some notes on my computer. I also got some notes right here as well. And I've even got my Bible, all right, sitting uh in front of me. The reason for the message today, uh, I actually attended a networking event. Yep. Uh yours truly, Tyler McCart. Go to networking events, which are actually, I would recommend you go into a networking event uh if you've never been to a networking event. Um, this one actually happened to be actually at uh the private Christian school that my uh kids attend. And uh about every other month uh they actually do a uh um a networking event just to gather up any kind of business leaders. So today they actually uh had Coach uh Kenny Dallas, my son, Tyler Jr.'s head football coach, uh share this morning. And uh he brought up actually in his uh before we actually did finish up our networking event, uh he just did a quick little Bible study and reference to uh the parable of the talents. And I'm not gonna get in, I might get into that a little bit, uh, but it just sparked in me uh this whole entire thing that I've actually been really kind of wrestling, I won't say wrestling with, but meditating on since really November. And that is stewardship versus ownership. Stewardship versus ownership. And I want you to follow me a little bit because this has been rolling around in me for a little bit of time, but I want to actually just kind of give you a context of this and kind of why it really kind of ministered to me and it might minister to you, uh my listener or you know, viewer. So I attended, as you guys might know, I attended the event uh with David Green uh and his family at Hobby Lobby uh back in November. And at that event, uh David Green actually referenced a book um and actually something that the Lord uh talked with him about uh that happened right around the time that whenever he was getting ready to turn 60 years old. And uh today he's at he's 84, so this has been 20 years ago. So this is right around maybe 2000-ish, uh uh 2000-ish, 99, 2000, somewhere in there, that he was telling the story. And as the story kind of goes, he was wrestling with the whole entire idea of how am I supposed to transition you know our business. And Hobby Lobby was actually getting ready to crestover or was right at a billion dollars in sales. Fairly significant. He was the owner, uh, him and his wife had about 85% of the ownership. Uh they had three children, and of those three children, uh, they all had 5% interest or equity in the business. And, you know, he was starting this whole entire thing of like the way that uh things are supposed to be going. I'm supposed to retire, I'm supposed to kind of, you know, go down to Florida, sail off in the sunset, uh sip on, you know, I don't know, my ties. I don't know if he, I don't think he drinks or anything like that, but whatever. And go and enjoy the fruits of my labor, which in in all retrospect is kind of, and then this is maybe a side thing, that the Bible doesn't even talk about retirement. Uh the Bible never even mentions the word, and that might be another episode for another day. But David Green just couldn't get his hand hands or arms around this whole entire idea of like succession and passing the um the actual business off to his kids, or who would be the person to take over uh if he retired and went on uh down to Florida. Uh, was that what he was supposed to do? Was he supposed to retire? And he was sitting there wrestling with this uh during that time of the early 2000s uh with him and you know it would keep him up at night. Well, after a couple months of this, uh, one night he was actually talking with the Lord and it was late at night, and Holy Spirit basically said, if the Jones family owned Hobby Lobby, how would you act? What would you do? And David was like, Well, um, quite honestly, I really wouldn't be that concerned about the succession plan. I wouldn't be concerned about who was gonna run the business because that wasn't my job at all to try to figure that out. I just needed to be the the good CEO right now that I needed to be. And yeah, I mean, that's be kind of where I would uh where I would need to be at. Well, the Lord said, Well, David, hello. I'm the owner of Hobby Lobby, not you. Okay. So if I'm the owner of the Hobby Lobby, then you are just the CEO or steward or head steward, if you want to look at it from that perspective, head steward of actually the business. And that set off in David, uh, David Green, a whole chain of events and a whole different mindset that he began to actually look through the lens of business ownership versus stewardship. And when he shared that story with me, it really impacted me, guys, to the point where I'm like, golly, man, um, you know, if you're the owner, and this is very key what I'm getting ready to say, if you're the owner of the business, then all the responsibility falls on you. Okay. If you're the one trying to run your family or head your family up, or you know, if you're trying to lead an organization, then that responsibility, that duty that you have can seem very, very heavy. But if you actually look at it through the gospel or through the teachings of uh of Jesus and kind of how the Bible talks about that God is actually the owner of it all, uh, you know, that's I think it says somewhere in Colossians that, you know, he is the he everything was made by him, but it was also made for him. Um, I think that's somewhere in Colossians, I'm not exactly sure. But God has a purpose, and God actually wants everything to run through him. It was never meant to be separated from him, it was meant to all be run through him. And so this whole idea of stewardship really needs to kind of come to the forefront of our mind because Jesus, towards the latter part before he left this earth, he talked in parables and used a stewardship or steward or servant illustrations or parables several times. I I mean, I just looked this up right here, and he uses, you know, where that the owner or the the king or the master or whatever it however this the parable goes is actually absent or leaves and leaves these stewards or servants in charge. And there's right at about um in the book of Matthew, there's four, and the book of Mark, there's two of these uh ones, and then the book of Luke, there's three. And we most know the ones of the parable the of the talents, and then there is also the parable of the minas. Actually, not a lot of people actually talk about the parable of the minas. I'll get back to that one, maybe a little different day. But majority of people do know about the the parable of talents. I come at that from a stewardship and ownership perspective, but if you look at actually the one about the parable of the talents, that master or that uh business owner or that king, whichever way it is looked at, gave to those individuals, those stewards, the resources. He was the one that actually employed, and he was actually the one that gave those resources to that. They were just entrusted to actually go and take those resources and actually multiply those resources. It wasn't the responsibility of them to own any of that. It wasn't theirs to begin with, but they were still responsible for trying to get the increase. I mean, even the wicked servant that actually, the lazy and wicked servant that was mentioned in the word, by the way, I mean, just the whole entire thing of, you know, not that he he was that servant was actually called was lazy, but he was also called wicked because he was not utilizing any part, or he didn't go and utilize the talent that was given to him to actually increase that on behalf of the owner. I think that's very fascinating that you actually can be wicked if you're not utilizing what God has given you. But the master comes back and says, Hey, hey man, you could have least uh put it into the bank and drawn some interest off of it. That's the least you could have done. You know, obviously there was risk involved, but with the other ones to go out and try to increase that, but they did get an increase in that. But it's just interesting how that I want uh us as Kingdom Success listeners and viewers to start to get this mindset of a steward where you don't have the burden of ownership, that the burden falls back on the owner because he is the one that is actually so supposed to supply you. He's the one that's actually supposed to uh you know give you the resources so that you can go and do what you need to do. He supplies actually everything in all honesty. He supplies the opportunities, he supplies the employees that are going to help you, he supplies uh the necessary funding or resources, he supplies all of that, guys. He supplies all that. And Jesus uses all these different analogies of a stewardship in him leaving and empowering us here to do our assignment, to do what we are called to do. And you know, from a family perspective, I think this is huge because as a as a head of the household, as a as a father, as a as a husband, as a patriarch of the household, you are called to steward the people that are underneath you, the children, your wife. You are called to do that. And God empowers you to do that. God gives you the resources to do that. And it's not your burden, it's not something that you have to carry, so to speak, all the time, that you don't have to own it. That's I guess that's where I'm going with all this. You don't have to own this. You can cast that actually onto the Lord and allow him to be the one to sustain you because he says he's gonna sustain you. I mean, that's that's exactly what it says, you know, that the master actually gave to the servants, gave to the stewards these resources. It wasn't upon them to go and give the resources, it was on them to actually go and multiply the resources that were given to him. Okay. So this is just something that was really kind of resonating inside of me of ownership and stewardship and this whole mentality of us shifting to more of a stewardship mindset and taking the burden off of us and allowing us to actually be free. Be free of ownership. Okay. Here's my call to action to you, or here's my request. If you'd like to get more information or learn more about uh how to create a legacy uh that will last beyond your children and your grandchildren to 150 years, uh reach out to me. Uh, I've got a uh contact information right in the bottom of this uh you know YouTube description, or actually in the uh podcast description below. You can reach out to me, uh, find me, and uh let's chat. Okay. So, King of Success, know that you're blessed, you're highly favored, you're empowered to prosper. You walk in divine health and spirit of breakthroughs upon you, and gang, we'll catch you on the other side.