Steward Leadership - Faithful Stewards Advance in Their Level of Responsibility

 

This is Chuck Rapp with Multiply, a podcast to provide a word of encouragement for village church planters and leaders. 

Our topic for 2025 is steward leadership. To quickly review, a steward is defined as “someone who manages resources belonging to another person in order to achieve the owner’s objectives.” In our context, we are managing resources provided by the Lord for our Village Church Planting work. 

In recent episodes, I mentioned five major themes of stewardship:

1. Character matters

2. Stewards have an obligation to account for their stewardship

3. Stewardship necessitates cultivating relationships

4. The steward must share his master’s goal for growth

5. Faithful stewards advance in their levels of responsibility

Today we reach this final, very important theme, and we return to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30. Recall that both the servants who were given five bags and two bags were faithful stewards and doubled their amounts. 

I want to call your attention to verses 28 and 29.  When the lazy servant failed to bring any return to the owner, the owner said, “So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance…”  

I want to repeat that phrase as it is very important. “Whoever has will be give more, and they will have an abundance.” The principle here is that faithful stewards will be entrusted with more.  This principle certainly applies to our work in Village Church Planting. 

We are seeing an incredible move – and the favor – of God across Africa in VCP. Here are some statistics.

• In the past five years, we have nearly doubled the number of countries in which we are working.

• In the past five years, we have more than doubled the number of VCP training centers.

• In the past five years, our budget (including a significant amount of project funds) has more than doubled. 

• In 2024, we saw more than a quarter of a million (250,000) decisions for Christ reported in VCP-planted churches. 

We are incredibly grateful for God’s favor and His provision, and we must steward this well. 

With this growth in VCP, more workers and more leaders are needed.  This means more trainers, coordinators and supervisors will be added to the team, and these will be selected from those who have demonstrated faithful stewardship. 

Faithful stewards advance in their levels of responsibility. 

This has been a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters and leaders.